


When the Day Loved the Night

by NotTheYounglings



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Badass Rey, But mostly angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Forced Marriage, He Has Some Issues, Just call me Miss Frizzle, Kylo Ren Redemption, Lovers To Enemies, Plot Twists, Pregnancy, Rey Redemption as well?, Ride on the Magic Cruel Bus!, Seat belts everyone!, The Dark Side of the Force, The Dark Side of the Resistance, Unplanned Pregnancy, and back again, too many of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2018-11-10 07:20:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11122476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotTheYounglings/pseuds/NotTheYounglings
Summary: The Resistance has failed.Newly appointed Jedi Knight Rey Kenobi discovers herself caught amidst the galaxy's greatest defeat as the First Order crushes every seething support of the heart of the rebellion- all except Rey.Alone and desperate to survive, her unalterable enslavement to the First Order bestows her a much more peculiar proposition- the orchestration of a marriage between the Jedi and her nemesis Kylo Ren.Merely a breeder for the First Order and her husband, Rey combats the darkness shrouding her prison until she discovers light shines just as surely from her sworn lover alongside an unfathomable gentleness and care.However, Rey soon learns that to gift one's heart to another results in the vulnerability of inexorable ties, and no matter the unforgivable betrayal the man, who she offers her love, compels her to endure, she will carry a piece of Kylo Ren inside her nonetheless.{Not your average Reylo baby fic}A canon compliant, multi-chapter homage to love, loss, betrayal... and how we mold the fabrics of ourselves in each of these things.





	1. Our Battle Cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “War is peace.  
> Freedom is slavery.  
> Ignorance is strength.”
> 
> -George Orwell

She peeled open her eyes and saw a fire.

 

Ribbons of amber danced across her vision, sparking a contagion of flames along the horizon. The air singed her nostrils as they flared.

 

 _Run_. She felt her legs begin to trudge forward. _Run, now. Go!_

 

Her breaths were labored, ragged from the smoke. A twig snapped below her feet, and Rey's figure plummeted to the ground. Hard. Brushing soot from her forearm, she had no time to brace herself before a tree branch above her gave way to the fire. She could only scream.

 

It was not the impact of the branch that hit her first but instead something sleek and cold, grappling onto her wrist with a force fit enough to split kyber crystals.

 

As she staggered to her feet, face flushed and eyes watering, Rey traced the outline of a figure through a blurred gaze. Ebony curls and gloved hands lugged her onward.

 

There was something peculiar, something oddly alluring about this man, something _riveting_ between their signatures in the force. Hunger invaded her every thought, and Rey longed to stretch her fingers through the tangles of his hair, to spin his face back to her own just for a moment. Just to _see._

 

The man halted, but Rey's feet did not heed his warning. She lurched past him, failing to slow herself before meeting the edge of a ravine. But, the hand from before remained latched around her own. He caught the weight of her toppling figure and clutched where his fingers still connected to her skin.

 

 _Don't let go!_ His face so close she felt his panicked breath. Unable to resist the call, she lifted her gaze and discovered a familiar set of tortured eyes. His eyes.

 

Rey mustered only a single hiss. _You._

 

As the fire, the forest, the cliff drifted and faded, the girl awoke, shaken and haunted, and so did he.

 

* * *

 

 

"It isn't working," Rey inhaled sharply, noting the muggy air around her, which reeked of salt. The rocks before the girl and her master remained dejectedly still.

 

Luke studied her in a wise nod, "Give it time, Rey. You're still learning, and today you were... simply..."

 

" _Distracted_ ," his padawan concluded his thought bitterly.

 

As the scavenger heaved herself away from the unmoved stones and toward their camp of huts, the Skywalker spoke up above the jingling of the lightsaber on Rey's hilt, "Your mind is elsewhere."

 

Rey shrugged, glancing back at him, "How observant."

 

"You're excited about our return to the Resistance after all of your training," Luke furrowed his brows thoughtfully, lightly brushing against her mind to scour out this truth, "Your friends await you."

 

A weak grin tugged at the corners of Rey's mouth while she reached the tip of the hill, "It's about time, Master."

 

"And, well-deserved," pride radiated from him; she would be his first Jedi Knight- his first successful heir, that was.

 

Rey huffed a shivering breath, grabbing herself as the wind bloomed and hummed approvingly, rustling the bending grass between the two figures atop Ahch-To's mountainside. The Jedi Master tilted his head toward the huts, "Pack your things."

 

With a terse flick of her chin, Rey dashed to the clay facade of a building she'd familiarized herself with as home for her remainder of months on the desolate island. Sunlight to sundown, she trained. Luke carried with him scrolls, ancient text, Jedi truths, and when they were not perfecting lightsaber technique, he fed this knowledge to his padawan. Rey had found herself woozy with the complexity of Jedi ways in the first few days of his teachings, but she had adjusted, grown, and blossomed from the naive scavenger she had been.

 

She was _not_ a scavenger any longer, however; Rey was a Jedi.

 

Her fingers traveled along the crumbling hut walls while her eyes darted to the tattered leather bag she'd already eagerly packed.

 

 _Finally_. Rey plopped down to the dirt floor, spurts of dust sprouting from where she kneeled, and she inspected the rest of belongings she'd not yet stowed away. A small trinket, the piece of map BB-8 had gifted her before their journey to Ahch-To, found its way to her fingers, and Rey reminisced fondly over the many adventures attached to the object. The plight to recover it from the unforgiving sands of Jakku, Finn and Poe and the other friends she'd made, the Jedi Master this tiny metal scrap had brought her to, and the destiny that now laid in her wake.

 

She grinned excitedly, unable to evade the wave of giddiness swaddling the thought of returning to the Resistance, her friends, her new life-

 

 _Pathetic_.

 

Rey stiffened abruptly, but she needed not to glance around for intruders.

 

 _Stay_ out _of my head-_

 

_As you wish... I'm certain I have many more interesting things to waste my time on._

 

The paralyzing pressure against her mind vanished, and Rey released a gasp, shaking herself quickly out of the daze. These encounters were common now, and annoying. She only wished Kylo Ren would find something more meaningful to obsess over, yet Rey could depend on each day, discovering the Knight of Ren tainting her thoughts once more.

 

She _loathed_ it.

 

And, she loathed the way he fed upon her distaste.

 

Rey's hate fueled his scheme as if Kylo Ren hungered for the satisfaction of her weakness, her anger.

 

Her stomach churned at these horrible things he _made_ her feel.

 

She longed, now, with the completion of her training to meet him once again and eradicate his constant presence in her mind, the way he haunted her every slumbering moment. Rey could feel it then, the light saber underneath her palms as she purged it forward and into his inexorable figure-

 

"Rey?"

 

Luke's voice chimed in the calmness of the sea beside them, and Rey peered over her shoulder. With an ancient smile, the master motioned for her to follow, paving the way to his ship which held the salvation for Rey's troubles in their return to her only home.

 

Swiftly pivoting back to her weathered satchel, she slid her arm underneath its strap in a singular motion, her hand falling unconscious onto the lightsaber upon her waistband as her training led her to do often. As Luke began the journey to their path home, Rey studied her hut once more in a bittersweet recollection of memories. A tug at her conscience, however, drew her away from the faded building.

 

With weapon in hand and heart, Rey giggled to herself subtly, trodding past her place of training as she followed her master once more. Something called to her, a voice, perhaps, and Rey lifted her face to the awaiting ship.

 

_This way to freedom._

 

* * *

 

 

 _Hollow_.

 

Rey toyed with her plate of rations, peering away from Poe and Finn who jibed charismatically with each other among the many other joyful hollers of Resistance members. Her gaze fell empty, and her mind crumbled away from the company of her friends and the bustling dining hall.

 

_You feel so... hollow._

 

The Jedi clenched her jaw, ignoring the voice lingering in her quiet mind.

 

_Why so silent, scavenger?_

 

A huff escaped Rey's throat as she pushed away Kylo Ren's presence in her conscience. What she wouldn't give if they were not weaved together so vexingly, but the villain weaseled his way still into every opportunity of her weakness.

 

_You know I'm right._

 

She could hear the sneer in his breathy voice. With gritted teeth, Rey rumbled lowly-

 

_I will not play this game with you, Kylo Ren._

 

Silence.

 

A sigh of relief drew Rey's attention back to reality, and she treasured the mere moment of victory. But, the pang of reality that was the truth in his statement haunted her nonetheless.

 

She paused, awaiting another condescending remark, but Kylo Ren had fallen quiet.

 

_If only he would always shut up so easily..._

 

"Rey!" Finn's hand landed on her shoulder in a fit of chuckles, causing her to jerk back to their conversation, "Rey, did you hear that one-"

 

"The Maker's sake, Finn, let her eat," Poe mused between laughs, munching on a mouthful of food with a grin.

 

Rey's eyes darting back to the plate of daunting rations before her, she pushed the unappealing dish forward, "Actually... I think I've lost my appetite..."

 

"You okay?" Poe chomped on another spoonful of grime, "Not like you to pass up a meal."

 

"Thanks," Rey rolled her eyes distastefully, though she couldn't quite deny her affinity to savor what rations the Resistance would bestow her. Years of hunger on Jakku had trained her so.

 

As the duo returned to an unspoken conversation of some unmeasurable humor, Rey stood herself up, adjusting her waistband while she strode away from the unwitting pair until Finn turned back to her, "Hey, where are you headed?"

 

"I need to think," she shrugged, and neither man dared to challenge that; they didn't comprehend the ways of a Jedi and never felt like questioning her rituals.

 

_At least someone knew wisely to leave her alone._

 

Unconsciously, her feet led her through the many winding halls of the Resistance base, passing various figures she'd become acquainted with, and Rey smiled meekly at each. The constant occurrence of these greetings, however, bore only another pang of isolation.

 

The Jedi detested her own dissatisfaction; there lay no reason for such sour feelings as the Resistance offered all she had desired.

 

But, an unquenchable loneliness plagued her still.

 

What a failure she must've been, unfit for a Jedi when she could not even manipulate her own emotions. Master Luke surely would frown if she mentioned her unhappiness. How she hated disappointing him.

 

Yet, Rey could not scour the genesis of her rigid feelings; it only unsatisfied her further.

 

_You admit it?_

 

She jumped, unprepared for the pressure against her mind as Ren taunted her once again. Unwilling to offer him the triumph of her resignation, Rey simply fingered through the humming energy stitching the two together, excavating the source and shattering it. As she blocked him from her thoughts, she could feel his grip struggling for balance.

 

_Why do you ignore me so-_

 

_You are my enemy, and I will promise only your destruction, never my open mind-_

 

_I know the reason for your dissatisfaction, scavenger._

 

Rey shuddered; he'd been listening.

 

_Let me show you. Let me show you what can heal your aching heart._

 

_I don't need fixing! Luke Skywalker is a far greater teacher than you could ever be-_

 

_Why do you conceal these things from him, then?_

 

Rey fidgeted, cursing Ren and his wit.

 

_Let me show you, scavenger._

 

Turning another corridor corner, the Jedi flinched.

 

_I am not a scavenger anymore._

 

* * *

 

They encountered one another like this, a fateful game of cat and mouse, in both mental and physical state.

 

_Why is it we must always meet in battle?_

 

Kylo Ren had challenged the young Jedi one sleepless night, and to that she held no answer.

 

Not until their lightsabers crashed together the next day on the battlefront, screeching with the friction of their opposition and unbroken bond of energy, always humming between the two.

 

 _This_ , she keened, _this is the fruit of our laboring fields_.

 

 _War_?

 

Ren had asked as his crimson saber slid across hers, maneuvering with the sheer might of his much larger figure.

 

"You are my enemy!" Rey screamed aloud, wrenching her lightsaber away and across his bicep in a wisp of smoke, "As long as you stand, as long as the Resistance stands, I vow to fight! You cannot deny the light hidden in your frail mind, and I will not stop until either that or my blade have consumed you!"

 

Moaning in a bark, Kylo Ren brushed the sparks clinging to his seared arm, his voice as sharp as the edge of his blade, "So be it."

 

And, there they remained, destined to an eternity of battle, prisoners to their own cataclysmic ambition, but souls sewn together in a forbidden tapestry.

 

As Kylo Ren tugged toward the darkness, Rey would surely follow, and when the Jedi erupted in the light, her enemy was fated to burn with her.

 

_You and I are slaves, can't you feel it?_

 

Rey lay, sleepless, in her Resistance bunker, unable to fight the stinging of her eyes as she covered her ears in a scream, fighting to block out the sound of Ren's voice.

 

_You cannot deny fate! We are bound, tethered at the heart!_

 

The Jedi shoved her face into the pillows beneath her.

 

_Leave me be! Why can't you leave me be-_

 

 _I can make it better, don't you understand? Together, we can mend that pain. Let me teach you_!

 

A cry sprouted from her dry throat, but Rey's sobs did nothing but implement the wicked truth further.

 

_Scavenger, you are tied to me as I am tied to you._

 

She choked, wiping away the steaming tears dripping down her face; she knew he was right, and she despised him so. In the force, she sought desperately for a sign, a signal that it was simply a cruel game, but her disenchanted heart betrayed her.

 

_We are the same, scavenger, you and I- We are slaves to the soul._

 

In her gut, something deep and dark bloomed, and with shivering breath, Rey opened her smoldering eyes in a final huff.

 

_But, I am not a slave to you._

 

* * *

 

 

"Take your weapons," General Organa nodded to the group of warriors before her, "And use them with valor."

 

Rey observed timidly as the pilots beside her hooked on their helmets, followed closely by their fellow soldiers who strapped various weapons to their waists.

 

"This day is for the Resistance," Leia's voice was shimmering iron, "The First Order will rue what they have done. For the Hosnian System, for the Resistance fleet, for my husband, for our children, for _their_ lives and the numerous others so vainly robbed of us, we will fight. Patiently, our enemies await our attack. But, they underestimate one unalienable truth; we fight _together_. Not with a king sitting upon a throne, puppeteering a fleet of pawns. Each and every one of us has a reason to fight. We believe in one another! We bleed with one another! We will _die_ with one another!"

 

Shouts clamored around the Control Room, and Rey glanced proudly at her master who'd already been nodding to her valiantly in encouragement of the final battle laid before them.

 

"If we fail, we will not fail in a forlorn cause. Our loss is not another tally in a statistic of numbers. We defend what is right, what this galaxy is built upon! _Hope_ ," General Organa's eyes gleamed in the grief of all the world had stolen from her, but the hollers of the Resistance, erupting in the spirit of the words she'd spoken, brought her gaze back to the loyal fighters awaiting her commands.

 

"Hope," she finished in a whispered declaration, "Hope is our battle cry."

 

A roar thundered in the crowded cubicle as weapons and feet rumbled against the ground.

 

"Peace! Freedom! Justice!"

 

Rey's voice melded with the shouts of countless others, and the General raised a fist as their chants dissipated.

 

"Finish what we started! Today is the end!" Leia bellowed with the unfathomable might of their battered and beaten army, "Hope!"

 

In a unanimous cry, hands soared to the sky, "Hope!"

 

* * *

 

 

The transport ship lurched forward, and Rey winced, clutching to the metal pole beside her. A ping accompanied the blast as alarms began screeching across the fighter.

 

"Master!" fright bloomed in the young Jedi's stomach.

 

However, Luke shifted his eyes to the pilots who had been tasked with navigating the pair through the planet's atmosphere to release them on the battle forefront. As if they could feel his piercing gaze, the captain hollered, "You need to land now! We've taken too much damage!"

 

The port door lowered with a hissing of metal to reveal the battlefield, a considerable distance below the ramp, and Rey shook her head while another blast ricocheted off the ship's opened entryway, "We have to jump!"

 

At the sound of her words, Luke released his grip on his seat, dashing toward the ground amidst the noise of blasters and falling soldiers with an agility defying his age. The master reached the ship's drop-off and motioned for his padawan. Rey gasped, sprinting until she spiraled downward and tumbled to the ground. Shielding her eyes from the planet's sun, she remained breathless until Skywalker wrenched her off the ground by her arm.

 

Rey stood, narrowly avoiding a blaster's fire, but her senses had prepared for this as her sapphire bladed lightsaber hummed, unsheathed, between her shaky hands before she'd looked down to retrieve the weapon.

 

"We need to find _him_!" Luke swung his own virescent lightsaber to avoid another blast, and the pair of master and apprentice moved seamlessly through the battlefield in their search.

 

A shockwave halted Rey, however, and her steps faltered alongside her breath.

 

 _Scavenger_.

 

Despite the crimson bullets of fire ensnaring the battlefront, Rey lowered her blade gradually as she pivoted around in a terrified silence.

 

 _Kylo Ren_.

 

His eyes were ablaze, reflecting the planet burning around them, yet his scowl remained ice. Rey scrambled for a voice, but the air to speak eluded her while she weakly called for Luke in the force's overwhelming vastness.

 

The man, his lightsaber flickering in a bloody contrast to hers, glowered, "You've brought your _master_ with you."

 

Rey tightened her grip on her steel blade.

 

"Ironic," his ragged voice antagonized her, but his statement was to be left unfinished as a scream resounded from just behind the Jedi.

 

Her eyes widened in a horrified paralysis.

 

 _Luke_.

 

Rey had nearly dropped her weapon at the pace she'd spun around to barrel toward her master. Her breathing failed her, uncontrollable and heavy while she squinted her eyes to spy Skywalker locked in a duel with an unfamiliar and monstrous figure. As she raced forward, gritting her teeth, Ren's voice lingered once more.

 

_I've brought my master, too._

 

Rey stumbled, nearly tripping over the helmet of a fallen stormtrooper while she cried, "Master! Master!"

 

_You can't do anything to help him, scavenger._

 

The snicker in Ren's words filled Rey with an anger that bubbled, boiling over and spilling into her untarnished heart. She began to scream, and Luke's face turned to hers as he pulled back from his opponent, "Rey!"

 

"Master!" she shouted.

 

His hand lifted toward her in a warning while the other held his saber, " _Run_!"

 

Luke's emerald blade shifted toward his opponent, but not before the enemy creature plunged the ruby tip of his blade forward and into the chest of the Jedi's master.

 

The world crumbled slowly.

 

" _No_!" Rey sobbed, charging forward only to collapse clumsily, sinking to her knees mere feet away from the villain and her fallen master.

 

_I warned you._

 

She choked as her eyes traveled to the sky, and the burning, ash contrail of a crashing ship painted the bloodstained sunset while another doomed X-Wing rammed into the planet's surface.

 

"You killed him!" her pitiful gaze wandered back to the monster who she then identified as the Supreme Leader.

 

Only he could be so barbaric.

 

Snoke merely frowned in a mock of sympathy, and Rey suffocated on the planet's filthy air which smothered her, "I will still fight! I-I will fight as long as there is hope!"

 

In a broken sob, the Jedi lifted her wobbly legs off the ground, heaving her blade up as Snoke's expression eased into a scowl.

 

"Dear child, don't you see?" he purred cunningly, "There is no hope."

 

Rey shut her eyes and swung her blade blindly, but her quivering knees gave way to the immeasurable weight of her emotions.

 

"There _is_ ," she spoke to herself, almost in a plea, "There is hope, we will _always_ have hope-"

 

The deafening strike of a Tie Fighter above dragged her eyes to the sky as the last X-Wing in flight spun out of control in an explosion of sparks against the planet's surface.

 

_No..._

 

Even in thought, her only word was a cry.

 

After a labored breath, Rey managed a splintered murmur, "The fleet..."

 

Snoke paraded elegantly to where she knelt as she wiped away the sticky tears consuming her face with a growl, "We have not lost, we've not lost yet-"

 

"Your other friends? The ones at the Resistance base," the Supreme Leader inquired, distinguishing her final naive hope from the depths of of her mind.

 

The Jedi shuddered as his gnarled palm landed against the side of her head, "Allow me to show you-"

 

_Tie fighters._

 

_Visions of Tie fighters filled her thoughts as they swarmed the unarmed Resistance base._

 

 _Rey watched helplessly while her friends, her comrades, her home was engulfed by the raining blaze of torpedos, igniting a chain of explosions around the base until the building began to fade away_.

 

" _No_!" the Jedi shrieked once again, retracting from Snoke in spastic sobs.

 

"What hope is there now? Tell me, girl," the Supreme Leader goaded, holding a hand out to her as she flinched fearfully, "You have nowhere else to run."

 

"I-I will not go with you!" her voice was uneven and broken.

 

Kylo Ren, despite this, manifested again behind the young Jedi, raising a gentle hand to her head of chestnut hair as the familiar unconsciousness from their encounter on Takodana overran her mind.

 

_You have no choice._


	2. A Ceremony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Death is not the greatest loss in life.  
> The greatest loss is what dies inside us when we live.”
> 
> -Norman Cousins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry about that delay! I was on vacation, and I couldn't quite find time to write. But, now it's on to Reylo and redemption, so please enjoy this next chapter! I'll be posting the following as well hopefully in the next day or so. :)  
> As always, please feel free to comment any questions, concerns, or feedback. I love hearing from you guys! Happy ready and a blessed day to you all!

Rey had awoken with a woozy moan.

 

The cell enclosing her was bleak and cold- both of which screamed of the isolation the First Order conveyed so well.

 

As soon as her eyes had sprung open, droids of all kinds began wrestling with her hair, her clothes, her dirtied face, cleaning and scrubbing away the grime which remained the last thing claiming her to the Resistance. They washed away what made her their enemy. And, after pressing on heavy, refined makeup to cover the impurities of her flesh, they had stripped her of her robes- her _Jedi_ robes- and shoved her into a metallic, silver gown.

 

Rey despised it all.

 

She fought the robots with such vigor, nearly crushing one of the androids altogether with the force, that the stormtroopers guarding her cell had place her in metal cuffs, some sort of wristbands.

 

 _Force-cancelling restraints._ She realized.

 

The Jedi pondered bitterly what other technological advances the First Order had gained above the Resistance.

 

_No wonder they had lost so easily._

 

The droids spent hours, it felt to Rey, weaving her hair into some illustrious nest of complicated braids, still painting her face with powdery liquid as if to brand her. She was the First Order's.

 

The Jedi could not fathom any reason for such extensive beautification, save for the personal pleasure of her captors. However, she had hushed herself eventually, resigning to the droids after her endless fight to hear their mechanical conversations.

 

 _The ceremony,_ remained the theme of which they spoke.

 

As the droids pulled tightly at her dress's laced fitting, Rey gazed at the droids collecting her jewelry and accessories to spy a thin sheet of ebony lace. A veil.

 

The Jedi's stomach curdled as she released an inaudible scream.

 

_The ceremony was a wedding._

 

She'd fought the droids again just as they had finished arranging final embellishments of what would be her costume in an orchestrated circus. But, her efforts were to no avail as the stormtroopers pinned their blasters to her head, leaving her but one choice: obedience.

 

The chapel hall was far larger and more beautiful than anything Rey had known the First Order capable of conceiving. Yet, she could not admire its grandeur amidst the event at hand. Solely, stormtroopers stood behind her, though that was no comfort as she knew their presence was only to raise their weapons and fire if she attempted any escape.

 

Her hands grew numb in the constricting bands wrapped around her wrists, her head already spinning with the weight of her jewelry. She had never worn anything so elegant before, yet never had she detested any piece of clothing more than the dress adorning her.

 

Kylo Ren entered last, a contradiction to the way Rey had known the order of weddings to follow. He, too, wore robes of unfathomable luxury, but it suited him nonetheless. Perhaps, after all, there was something in him similar to his mother. What intrigued Rey most, however, was his uncomfortable, stiffened figure. It seemed he found the ordeal no more appealing than she.

 

Rey wondered cynically to herself,  _Pity, did he finally regret a choice?_

 

There were no rings.

 

They had no need for a sanction of union when they already shared a bond far more powerful than any of material things.

 

They spoke no vows, either.

 

Rey doubted they could've forced her to speak about this monstrous man in a manner of affection, but she knew this wedding was not for love. This wedding was about opportunity.

 

When the ceremony concluded, Kylo leaned forward hesitantly to seal the two together. Rey, however, pulled away in a whimper, leading his lips to land softly against her jawline instead of her mouth. In a way, it appeared to relieve him. But, Rey could feel his pang of disappointment ripple through their bond. 

 

Inside, she narrowed her gaze at him,  _Do not expect me to rejoice in being your prisoner._

 

If he had heard her, he did not show it, timidly lacing his fingers into her hand as they stood up, different people than before. She was his wife, and he was her husband; Rey knew, beneath her newfound title, she was still a slave.

 

The two were escorted out of the hall, down several winding corridors until they reached a room, and Kylo Ren stepped inside first while Rey watched him suspiciously. She lingered at the entrance still, but a trooper eventually shoved her toward the door. Before she could resist, the door shut behind her.

 

Ren was watching her simply from across the seemingly huge room, peeling off his leather gloves before he reached for his waist and began pulling his armor over his head.

 

"What are you doing?!" Rey demanded worriedly, pressing herself against the wall as that was the furthest she could run from him.

 

Kylo Ren, however, looked at her plainly in a blink, "Changing my clothes."

 

The Jedi watched him narrowly, and he noticed her piercing gaze.

 

"You don't think I actually enjoy wearing those, do you?" he inquired with a grunt, slipping out of his dress shirt and gesturing to the robes he'd already shaken off.

 

Rey scowled as he pilfered through a compartment of clothing connected to the wall. Sensing her everpresent glare, he spoke up, facing away, "I suggest you do the same-"

 

"I will _not_ undress in front of you," she hissed.

 

Kylo Ren pivoted around, carrying a small bundle of clothing as he held it out to Rey and pointed shortly in the direction of another door, "There's a bathroom-"

 

"I do not want to _change_ with you here," the Jedi altered her request, though it bore no less truth than before. 

 

With a tired sigh, Kylo Ren stepped back, plopping down on the edge of his- _their_ bed.

 

"I think we need to have a discussion-"

 

"Oh, you think that's it?" Rey snapped. She didn't care what he thought of her. She didn't care that they were married to one another. She didn't care about anything, frankly, and she certainly did not care about hurting his feelings.

 

It seemed the mindset was mutual as he took a patient breath, "Would you please listen to me for a few moments?"

 

Rey's silence was an answer enough.

 

Hesitantly, Kylo dipped his head-almost boyishly, as he lifted a hand toward her and himself, " _This_ is for your safety."

 

"And, I suppose killing all my friends was for my safety as well?" she chided.

 

"I cannot control what the Supreme Leader does and orders us to do, scavenger," he shut his eyes uncomfortably, "But, please know that I chose this to _protect_ you."

 

The Jedi scoffed, "To protect me from what?"

 

" _Him_ ," Ren stood up and spun away from her, jamming his hands into his pockets, "The Supreme Leader."

 

Rey folded her arms, "I think I can handle myself-"

 

"It was either him or me," Kylo Ren's voice grew grave as he turned back around to her, "I chose myself for _your_ sake."

 

Her gaze challenged his, but she couldn't deny the strange warmth inside her after he'd spoken the statement. Swiftly, though, it was replaced with anger as he began to speak again, "I require no more of you than maintaining the title of my wife if that's all you wish-"

 

"Your master seems to expect otherwise," Rey countered, rubbing the prison-like wristbands the stormtroopers had yet to remove.

 

They both knew she was not wrong. Rey had easily ciphered the importance of what she could breed with him for the First Order, and she did not doubt that this was the sole reason for her survival.

 

However, Ren's eyes softened as he muttered sourly, "I am _not_ the Supreme Leader, scavenger."

 

He stood up quietly, gathering the rest of his clothing and slipping on an overcoat while Rey studied him. She could not find comfort in his presence, but she did not feel quite so alone for the first time since her capture.

 

"I will not share a bed with you," Rey declared abruptly to mute her thoughts; she detested these feelings.

 

Ren paused, observing her silently, though he had expected something like this. With a nod, he stepped away from the only piece of furniture in the room, "It's yours, then."

 

Rey stood, baffled, as Kylo Ren waded quietly toward the door, offering her no second glance. As he slid the room's entrance open, he glanced back to her, "I'll come find you in the morning."

 

She did not nod but acknowledged him by pivoting away until he spoke up again, "Please don't do anything you normally would do."

 

Rey flipped her face to him in a glare, though he watched her with only concern. She loathed that he was right; she'd do something stupid to escape the first chance she could. But, her expression remained ice while Ren shut the door, deserting her for the night.

 

After much contemplation, Rey crumpled onto _her_ bed, unable to resist the wave of exhaustion pouring over her. She shoved her face against the mattress and groaned, but quickly she slipped underneath the comforters, too tired to worry about the dress she still donned.

 

She was unfamiliar with this Kylo Ren, calm and collected unlike the raging man she knew. Despite her every will and wish, she preferred this version instead. But, one conversation could not alter his identity, and Rey sank back into the content feeling of hatred toward him. It was a far more comforting emotion to know how she felt about him, to choose. She knew that her choices would be limited from then on, and she would savor every choice given to her.

 

She vowed then she would escape, she would choose her freedom from the First Order. They could have her obedience, but they would never have her heart. And, Kylo Ren- _husband in word but enemy in heart._

 

She would offer him only the same.


	3. Little Jedi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Heroes can save the world,  
> but villains can change it.”
> 
> -J.M Fray

It was a strange sensation, showering with her Force-muting bands still attached.

 

Rey couldn't find the will to care as she lifted her face to the steaming spout, drenching herself and cleaning away what made her  _theirs._ ~~~~The water pooling at her feet clouded with tufts of milky white, and the Jedi could feel the layer of pressed makeup stuck to her face slip down her fingers. Satisfied, she reached over the shower cubicle's door and snatched her towel, swiftly opening the door to a blast of frigid air, and she lifted her chin as if to soak in the wild contrast-

 

"The Supreme Leader has summoned you," a mechanical voice caused Rey to nearly scream and stumble backward as she opened her eyes and discovered a droid standing across from her at the bathroom's entrance.

 

Scrambling to shield her unclothed figure, she shrieked, "Get out! Get out! I'm kriffing  _naked_ -"

 

"I am a droid," the animatronic answered, "Congratulations, I do not care."

 

Rey straightened as she finally knotted her towel around herself; she wasn't aware the First Order had a sense of humor.

 

Visibly impatient, the droid repeated its message in her silence, "The Supreme Leader has summoned yo-"

 

"I heard you already," she ran her hands through her tangled hair as small, falling water droplets beaded onto her shoulder from her soaked hair, "Kylo Ren wasn't brave enough to fetch me himself, was he?"

 

"Master Ren is already in conference with the Supreme Leader," the droid corrected, "And, I am to escort you to your check-up."

 

Rey pushed past the robot into the bedroom, reaching for the stack of clothes Ren had given her, "A check-up? What am I, a youngling?"

 

"The Supreme Leader has requested that your health be monitored and evaluated," the droid pivoted toward the bedroom while Rey quickly slipped on her new, but still ebony, clothing.

 

The Jedi's face contorted into a grimace.

 

She wasn't naive, but she had hoped to forget her purpose among the First Order. Her every surviving moment, however, was a reminder enough.

 

After she'd tucked in the shirt too loose on her torso, the droid led her out into the corridor, winding through halls of all kinds. Rey found it hard not to tense every time they passed a different group of stormtroopers as she was not used to being an ally of the First Order.

 

_An ally._

 

The words were toxic on her tongue.

 

After the droid coerced Rey into submission as she was guided to a chair in the infirmary, doctors and nurses bombarded the Jedi, seeking samples and retrieving bits and pieces of Rey to dispel into the First Order's vast medical archives. Rey almost preferred the company of the droid rather than this swarming of people. Once their data had been collected, however, her wish appeared to be granted as the medical staff vanished, and Rey encountered a familiar, cynical sensation of loneliness. It seemed to be engraved into her personality.

 

"The Supreme Leader will see you presently," a sudden contradiction arose in the quiet room, and Rey lifted her eyes to spy her droid gesturing to the door again. She tried to deny the pang of disappointment in finding only the robot's presence.

 

She begrudgingly heaved herself up to follow, shadowing the droid as they embarked once again down the First Order's bleak corridors. Rey didn't need to guess which door led to the chambers of the fabled Supreme Leader; no other passageway illustrated such grandeur.

 

Rey stood in front of the entryway, studying the intricate iron carvings above her- she recognized the etching.

 

"Peace is a lie, there is only passion."

 

Luke had warned her of this morale.

 

 _The way of a sith_ , she remembered.

 

Before Rey could cower away from the looming chamber doors, the metal slid away to reveal the vast, pitch-black stained hall while the droid beside her chirped, "I will leave you now."

 

The Jedi knew animatronics could not convey emotions, yet fear still blossomed around the machine. Sucking in a breath, Rey stepped forward and into the room.

 

Almost precisely as she entered the abyss-like hall, a cunning voice roared, "Your scavenger has arrived."

 

Rey's eyes darted forward as Kylo Ren stood some distance away from her, unmasked yet again as he spun around to face her while she marched forcefully toward him. Her confident steps were a facade; inside, she trembled.

 

Behind Ren laid the voice's culprit- a hologram several stories high that irrefutably embodied the Supreme Leader.

 

The Jedi couldn't help but ponder the reason Snoke needed to inflate himself to something larger. She would have assumed simply the title "Supreme Leader" would serve powerful enough to invoke fright in others, but Rey also knew the heart of a greed-lusting man. _Nothing_ could serve as enough.

 

Snoke's figure tapped subtly onto the throne beneath him, unveiling an uncharacteristic impatience in him. Rey had also insinuated the Supreme Leader to be a calculating creature filled with wisdom and time, yet Snoke's breath of annoyance challenged just that.

 

 _You'll find there are many things you've wrongly assumed, scavenger_ , Ren dipped his chin to Rey, though she flipped her stare to the Supreme Leader fearfully.

 

Despite Kylo's thought of an... insult toward him, Snoke's stature failed to falter.

 

He hadn't heard; their bond remained something he could not penetrate.

 

Instead, the Supreme Leader leered at the young woman and boomed once again, "How fortunate we are and honored for your company, Rey Kenobi."

 

"I don't think it was fortune that spared me amidst the rest of the Resistance," Rey retorted, listening as the fabric of Ren's robes stiffened beside her.

 

Snoke's feral eyes flickered as his face suddenly twisted sourly, "We are here to discuss your obligations as an asset of the First Order."

 

"What makes you believe I'll comply?" the Jedi's cheeks grew hot in regret, but she did not stray away from the monster before her, even with Kylo Ren's stare pointed directly at her as his quivering voice whispered in her mind.

 

_What are you doing...?_

 

"It doesn't seem there's anywhere else for you to go, little Jedi," Snoke snarled, his voice flooding with indignation as his crooked fingers pointed to the bands sewn to Rey's wrists.

 

Unconsciously, her hands rubbed the metallic rings imprisoning her, but she drew in a boiling breath as she began to glower-

 

 _Don't_.

 

Rey swung her gaze to Kylo Ren, yet he made no acknowledgement of his desperate statement.

 

_Retaliation will only worsen your circumstances._

 

The Jedi released a furious breath, prepared to defy Ren's pathetic plea, but Snoke's voice silenced both their thoughts, "Little Jedi, do you know why I spared you?"

 

Rey tensed; she did not like this new nickname.

 

However, she would not retort or provide Snoke the satisfaction of admitting her purpose- accepting it, and she would not so easily _submit_.

 

The Supreme Leader's fury bloomed in her silence.

 

"You are here," Snoke hissed, "Because of your bloodline, what it can offer us."

 

"'Us?'" Rey's eyes bounced between Ren and his master in mockery, "I wasn't aware _you_ fancied Jedi, Supreme Leader-"

 

A searing pain jolted Rey away from her words as both her hands traveled to her head and clutched the sides of it.

 

Snoke tilted his face to the side, "You will _speak_ when you are _told_ , am I understood...?"

 

Tears had sprung from Rey's eyes as she choked on an agonizing cry, ripping away at the force to repel the pressure crushing her skull. She shook her head and shut her eyes, bellowing a sob, meanwhile Snoke's gaze only intensified.

 

Kylo Ren fidgeted uncomfortably until he could not ignore his urge to shield his scavenger, "That is _enough_ , master-"

 

" _Silence_!" the Supreme Leader thundered and released Rey as she sank to her knees in a gasp, " _You_ are the reason she sees fit to rebel still, Kylo Ren! Perhaps, if you could control your little Jedi, we would find _use_ in her, but your weakness leads you to fail once again!"

 

Kylo Ren stepped backward as a result of reflex, and the Supreme Leader noted this bitterly.

 

"Leave me," he muttered in disappointment, and his hologram began to glimmer in disappearance.

 

Ren nodded obediently but dejectedly, gruffly seizing Rey's arm and dragging her to the room's entrance.

 

As she stumbled behind him, her tear-filled eyes rose to the backside of his figure, "What did he _do_ to me...?"

 

Kylo Ren, however, swung his head to her in brutal animosity, "I _warned_ you. I warned you, and you didn't _listen_ to me-"

 

"He was going to kill me," Rey softened her gaze while it fell to the ground, "And, you didn't even _stop_ him-"

 

Kylo Ren's stepped halted as he yanked the Jedi to his chest, lifting her chin up to his face in a breathy growl, "Do you know what you've done, today?"

 

Rey squirmed in his solid, gloved hands, but his grip prevailed. 

 

"Do you know what you've _cost_ me?!" Kylo's breath was staggered and burning, and Rey could feel it against her nose.

 

With a frown, she shook her head in a cry, "I am just your vessel, what I say doesn't matter-"

 

" _I_ am responsible for your actions, scavenger!" Ren screamed, pulling her terrified face closer, "Your words condemn _me_!"

 

Rey gritted her teeth, " _You_ can fend for yourself, Kylo Ren! You have the entire First Order under your command-"

 

"The Supreme Leader is my _master_ , and he will punish-" Ren began in a snarl but swiftly cut himself off in a moment of vulnerable silence until he muttered, "I cannot try to make you understand. You will not accept what I say."

 

Rey furrowed her brows, "You haven't the bravery to tell me-"

 

"Or, I know that your simple mind will not comprehend the wisdom of the Supreme Leader, _scavenger_ ," he continued to lug her back through the corridors to her room, though Rey scoffed and tugged at his hands.

 

As Ren pressed open her bedroom's steel doors, she challenged him, "And, what of the objective? My _purpose_ -"

 

"There are more significant matters at hand than _you_ ," Kylo Ren spat and slammed the doorway shut, leaving the Jedi to herself, as Rey succumbed once again to the self-crushing loneliness seeming to doom her always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all! I hope you're enjoying this fic so far! I'm shooting to have the next chapter up tomorrow and maybe another if I find some inspiration. As always, feel free to comment or leave a like, and let me know what you think about this work!


	4. Allied in Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
> 
> -Buddha

Rey couldn't wave away the peculiar familiarity as she studied her bedroom's abyss of a ceiling, cautiously observing the lights which flickered softly, much like the ships passing her by each night she laid sleepless and starry-eyed on Jakku.

 

She easily favored the wasteland planet over the almost emptier quarters of the First Order.

 

Jakku was a desert, yet she felt more isolated in this new home than she ever had as a child.

 

Rey clamped her eyes shut, calling into the void of the Force that when she would wake again, she would find herself far away from this cage, from the men trapping her inside, back to the only place she had ever belonged-

 

There was a knock on her door.

 

Stiffly, Rey stretched and squirmed out of her bedsheets as she stumbled in the pitch-black room toward the noise, which resounded obnoxiously again. She pressed a head to her forehead in a groan, suddenly woozy in her half-slumber state.

 

 _It must've been two in the morning by then... what would a_ visitor _want_ -

 

The incessant knocking derailed her thoughts once more, and she muttered unpleasantly, "I'm coming, I'm coming!"

 

Her hand extended blindly for the door, only to have it glide out of reach before she'd so much as touched it, vanishing to unveil her unwanted company.

 

_Kylo Ren._

 

Rey stiffened, any sign of her fatigue dissipating as she narrowed her gaze in a scowl, "Well."

 

He was unmasked, again, though Rey wished he donned the ridiculous helmet so that their eyes wouldn't meet so vulnerably.

 

"Well," he lifted his chin coldly.

 

Her patience had already been wrung dry with their previous encounter only hours beforehand, and Rey's suppressed fury fluttered inside her once again, "Is there something you need?"

 

Ren fidgeted, his hands twitching as his rigid face turned downwards, "I came... to say that I should not have yelled at you. I realize now that you weren't aware of circumstances-"

 

"Are you apologizing to me?" Rey inquired in genuine disbelief, her eyebrows furrowing in her confusion.

 

Kylo Ren's stare shifted away from her, but he did not reply.

 

The Jedi feared she might release a chuckle at his absolute absurdity, marching to her room in the middle of the night to _apologize_. He was a Knight of Ren for the maker's sake, yet there he stood at her doorway, awaiting forgiveness.

 

Despite her amusement, Rey could not sway her bitterness. She stepped backward, beginning to force the door closed again when she noticed Ren's presence still.

 

"Is that all?" her voice chimed in scorn.

 

Ren's eyes traveled back to hers once more as he clenched his fists, "We need to discuss your residency here."

 

The Jedi backed away again, pivoting in thought and apprehension, and Kylo seized the moment to step inside her room. She swung back to him almost immediately, "My 'residency'-?"

 

"Your _purpose_ ," he cleared his throat as her bedroom door slid shut.

 

Rey's face flooded with heat at the mention of this, but she managed a scoff, "So, it's important when it's convenient to _you_ -"

 

"You have been here for almost three days, scavenger, and I've still not discussed anything with you," Ren countered, and Rey could not deny this. In fact, she could not ignore her confusion still as to what was supposed to fill her daily schedule, what the First Order required of her in her spare time.

 

Begrudgingly, she lifted her face to listen.

 

"Snoke," Kylo Ren was visibly uncomfortable, nervous even as he spoke, "Assumes we've slept together. He's expecting progeny between you and me, children he can train and utilize. That is our obligation, scavenger, between the both of us-"

 

"If this is how you intend to seduce me," Rey's nostrils flared while she swiveled away from him, "I'm afraid you'll be rather disappointed-"

 

" _I_ do _not_ expect that from you," Kylo Ren's voice was firm, but he carried with him a gentleness as he finished his statement.

 

Rey raised her eyes back to him in the quiet room.

 

While he waited tensely for her reply, the Jedi pursed her lips, "Your Master would not concur-"

 

"He doesn't need to be informed of our agreement," the man remarked casually, calmly, much more relaxed than before. Rey couldn't help but ponder what gave him such security to defy his Supreme Leader.

 

Her lips remained sealed, however, as she scrutinized Kylo Ren in front of her.

 

"I cannot provide you... the things you wish. Love, care, bliss; I am not truly rehearsed in any of those things," Ren murmured, "But, I _can_ promise you this."

 

Rey grew intrigued against her will, "This?"

 

"I can be your ally," he adjusted his posture and pulled himself higher, though Rey detested the way that title stung.

 

His proposition hung dryly in the hushed bedroom until the Jedi narrowed her gaze, "I don't _need_ an ally-"

 

"You need protection," his statement was not an opinion but a fact, "Someone to guide you before you get yourself killed as you nearly did this morning. No one here knows you, _understands_ you like I do, scavenger. No one is _tied_ to you like I am."

 

The comfort swaddling his words terrified Rey, for she had not wished to address these truths she already knew. How promising it sounded to agree and let herself sink into the inevitable strings of fate weaving them together. In the Resistance, not even Luke, she felt, had  _known_ her. Her figure softened as Ren's suspenseful gaze analyzed her every movement.

 

He _wanted_ herto agree.

 

The young Jedi tensed, loathing herself in her longing for the same. The two of them, despite every contradiction, bore similarities endless to the eye. Broken, they were both so broken and _lonely_.

 

_You feel it, too?_

 

Rey hadn't noticed her flushed face, suddenly spurring with the uncontrollable wettening of her eyes, but she could not force the words off her tongue, still plagued with the distrust of imprisonment.

 

Kylo Ren's expectant face faltered.

 

"What do I have to do, scavenger? What will bring you to my side?"

 

His words were so  _warm_ , but Rey would not be the one ruined by them.

 

"You could start by using my real name," the Jedi roused, to which Kylo Ren's stare drooped defensively.

 

It was a formality, a way he had fought off the deafening urge in his heart to submit to the- _his_  scavenger, the little Jedi shadowing his every conscious moment. To name something meant to bear an attachment,  _weakness_ for it, and Kylo Ren had resisted this still. However, she was there then, and he would abide if it were to please her any.

 

" _Rey_... what will persuade you?"

 

She had him on his knees. The Jedi could order anything she desired; of course, she assumed the First Order wanted for nothing. And, here Ren was, defenseless to her every will and command. Rey could have demanded the world if that was what she wished, but instead the young Jedi dipped her head to him curiously.

 

"Honesty..." she grinned at this thought, for this had been one thing which Kylo Ren had yet to fail, "Promise me the truth in all you do, no matter any agenda of the First Order, and I will put my _trust_ in you."

 

Ren's gaze wavered momentarily, and he sucked in a ragged breath. But, he nodded shortly, tapping a finger anxiously against his thigh, "If that's all you wish-"

 

"And, my lightsaber," Rey interrupted, raising a finger to him, "I want that back."

 

"You'll kill me if I give that to you," Ren frowned, unamused, and the scavenger could not object or else feign to break their promise of truth already.

 

In her silence, Kylo Ren's boots resounded in metallic clanks as he strode back to her doorway, but Rey piped up in sudden reluctance.

 

"These...?" her hands were held out, displaying the iron bands still attached to them, "These... too."

 

Ren studied her cautiously, but he eventually caved into her wish, marching over to her with a sigh as he placed his fingers over her wrists.

 

"Can I trust you, Rey?" his voice was but a whisper, and Rey trembled underneath the lightness of his touch, her need to defy his question, the scorching heat blooming between them.

 

She lifted her gaze, her face so close to his she feared it might graze him, "As long as I can trust _you_."

 

For a splintered moment, his lips curled- a _smile_.

 

It swiftly faded as the seals of her chains clinked and fell limply to the floor in a monstrous clatter, and Kylo Ren stepped toward the doorway immediately, his broad shoulders facing Rey.

 

As the Jedi studied her freed, quivering hands, his touch lingering still, she glanced back toward Ren to thank him, but her eyes met only her door slamming shut again.

 

_Allies._

 

The word had carried with it so much anger and rage, yet Rey discovered comfort in this newfound title.

 

 _Allies_ , she hummed quietly to herself once more, left only to revel in the unbecoming warmth lying deep in his words.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all! Thank you once again for sticking with this story! I want to also thank you readers for your kind comments and kudos. They mean so very much to me, and I can't express how cool it is that I get to share this story with you! 
> 
> Keep commenting (as long as you feel like it of course), and don't be afraid to let me know about any questions or concerns you may have :)
> 
> (The quote from the chapter summary is from Buddha by the way, and I thought it fit nicely)
> 
> Have a blessed day and thank you again for reading!


	5. His Oasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am now beyond parched.  
> My strings left untouched.  
> You are no longer an oasis, my friend,  
> but a mirage soon coming to an end."
> 
> ~Kamand Kojouri

He was a desert.

 

"There is something wrong with him, Han, in here- in his heart!"

 

The scrawny child's gaze flickered upward to the sound of his parents bickering, unaware of the boy hidden behind dark tresses who listened keenly.

 

"Send him to Luke, then! I don't know how else you want to fix him!"

 

The boy hugged his wiry legs to his chest and shoved his seven-year-old face into them. 

 

He needed fixing...?

 

_They're simply afraid of you, child._

 

The teeny boy flinched and cowered away from the voice- _that_ voice.

 

"I don't want them to be afraid of me," he whimpered and choked on a muffled sob. With terrified hesitation, the boy lifted his eyes and scoured the room for his teacher, this voice, but his tears blurred what little he could see in the darkened room. Vision needed not aid him, however, as a shiver rippled through him alongside his master's rolling tongue.

 

 _Fear is our ally, boy- to bring those who oppose us to their knees with one fleeting command, don't you see? You will grow to understand, dear child; Fear is_ power _._

 

The boy clenched his eyelids shut in a catastrophic cry.

 

He glimpsed a man. He could feel the vile solitude radiating from the ebony robes veiling his leering figure, masked by a battered piece of metal. Inside the boy loomed the pulsing of _fear_.

 

He spotted his father. Through the boy's own gloved hands, he fell into a chasm below, drifting away in brutal silence.

 

He could see his mother, ancient and wise as she always had been just before a searing line of fire consumed the building above her and left the base in a pile of ash and rubble, despite his shouts of warning.

 

He saw a girl. She was tattered, beaten, and dirty, but she was _beautiful_. Her chestnut hair fell in stringy wisps upon the sides of her face while a familiar loneliness beamed from a foreign chain linking his heart to hers.

 

He sucked in a breath, desperate to call-

 

_You... You feel it, too?_

 

However, the boy had forgotten he was a desert, and surely she could be only a mirage.

 

He saw a woman, a warrior, a  _Jedi._ The man from before stood behind her, his robes swirling in the wind between the two. The boy gaped in horror as the man toyed with the hilt of a weapon in his hand until it hissed with the release of its crimson blade.

 

_Fear is our ally, boy._

 

The man hesitated, but raised his bloody saber even so.

 

_Fear is **power**._

 

"Ren?"

 

Kylo flinched, readjusting his gaze to spy Rey in front of him. She pursed her lips and reached a hand to situate the jingling belt on her hips before she lifted her waiting stare back to him.

 

She'd asked him a question.

 

Ren lowered his gaze as he tugged at the thrumming energy between them, searching for any indication of her question, but he feigned distracted by her hands, tussling with her attire once again.

 

He examined her thoughtfully.

 

Rey wore a dress, far more ornate than the robes they had given her before. It twisted around her in sheets of velvet black, held against her body by a single band of silver diamonds hooked tightly just above her waist. A similar string of jewels fell upon her collarbone and weaved an intricate pattern of gems, which covered her entire neck. Her hair tumbled gracefully to her shoulders in lazy waves, and Ren noted that it was the first time he'd glimpsed Rey with her hair down. Beneath her hazel locks, a cluster of diamonds shimmered solemnly against her ears.

 

She was exquisite.

 

One would never know she had been merely a desert scavenger months before, coated in sweat and grime, but Ren observed her fidget uncomfortably under the ebony fabrics.

 

 _She_ despised it.

 

He huffed to himself as he realized this costume could not change who she was. Meanwhile, her patience betrayed her, "Are you going to answer me?"

 

Ren wavered from his thoughts and frowned.

 

"I missed your question-"

 

"You do that quite a bit," Rey observed him, squinting, "Traveling away in your own mind..."

 

The two suddenly jerked forward in their seats across from one another with the jolt of their transport ship.

 

Ren tensed in discomfort of the topic, whispering a plea into the force that Rey would return to her question instead.

 

"What were you thinking about?" 

 

Kylo Ren cursed the force silently. _Not the question he had wanted._

 

He tapped a gloveless finger onto his leg while he answered sharply, "Nothing-"

 

"Remember what you promised me," she warned with an urgent longing for his answer, for his trust, and Ren winced audibly.

 

"It was _nothing_ ," his voice was gruff, and Rey knew better than to provoke his fury again.

 

Conversely, her eyes flickered downward before she raised them once more and repeated the question he had not heard, "Where's your mask?"

 

Kylo Ren furrowed his brows just as another jerk rippled throughout the ship.

 

"You haven't worn it at all..." Rey tilted her head curiously.

 

Kylo wished then that he did in fact don the article as the woman's stare pierced the infractions of his heart he hoped had been hidden.

 

"It was left on Starkiller," he could feel the heat of his breath against his nostrils as they flared, "Burned up with the rest of the planet."

 

She nodded, and Ren loathed how he knew he was not the only one who longed for his mask still. He did not blame Rey for her intrigue, but her distaste for the object's absence stung just the same.

 

Rey swiftly observed his mortification, peeking behind herself to the blinding swarms of stars passing their ship by, "Remind me again where it is we're going?"

 

"The conclave," his muscles eased finally, and he eyed her in gratitude of the subject change.

 

Rey slid around in her seat to him, her jewelry clinking softly, and Kylo noticed the confusion painting her face. Rubbing the uncomfortable, opulent fabrics shielding his own skin, he explained with a nod, "It's a meeting of sorts- I suppose you could call it that. The conclave is our form of government. They mirror a council with the Supreme Leader at the head. They've summoned one another to discuss the aftermath..."

 

 _Of their victory_. He did not need to speak the words for Rey to hear them.

 

With a quivering sigh, Rey dipped her head, her flushed face veiled by a thick sheet of cosmetic paste, "And, what of you and me? Their expectations...?"

 

Ren fumbled for words in blatant hesitation.

 

Eventually, he forced his voice into the ship's bleak air, "You are their... confirmation."

 

Rey's shoulders caved suddenly as she pressed herself back against her seat.

 

Kylo Ren, in a haste, sat himself up and forward toward the Jedi. He longed to press a hand to her cheek, to assure her he would guide her through the conclave's interrogation soon to follow, or to wipe away the tiny teardrops spilling from her sewn shut eyes, but he could not muster the bravery to reach his palm toward her. He did not wish to violate the limits of their alliance. 

 

His voice, however, defied him in a firm contradiction, "There are many things they plan to say to provoke you, but you cannot succumb to them. You must play the part, or Snoke _will_ punish the both of us, do you understand?"

 

Rey lifted the back of her hand to her dampened eyes, careful not to smear her sable makeup as she tilted her chin in sullen agreement.

 

The ship clamored in abrupt interception of the ground, and its brakes sealed tightly as the port door lowered with the release of a hissing pocket of air.

 

Kylo Ren stood himself up, stiff from the journey while he strode toward the ramp. But, he paused, noting Rey's absence. Pivoting back to his missing companion, he hesitantly trekked to where she sat in silence, and his hand unfurled toward her.

 

After a moment of quiet, her exhausted eyes shifted to his open palm as he spoke with subtle encouragement, "I can't do it alone."

 

She took his hand warily while he helped her from her seat in an unbecoming gentleness. As the pair waltzed to the open port door, Rey peered down to find their fingers intertwined still. Her eyes traveled next to Kylo Ren who appeared not to notice the lingering of her touch. A pang of sickening heat bloomed despite Rey's subtle indignation, and she wiggled her fingers to escape Ren's grasp in resistance of the feeling, "I don't need you to hold my hand."

 

"You are my wife," the false composure of his voice was betrayed only by the embarrassed panic clouding his eyes, "The conclave knows no better than that, and it must stay that way."

 

Rey scrutinized him skeptically, but Kylo Ren could feel her fingers below his relax and sink again into his grip, perhaps even strengthening her own hold of him- more confident, assured. He succumbed to his relief in her doing so.

 

The two paraded down the platform serenely, in unison. One foot after the other.

 

Both discovered themselves pacing their steps in a shared anxiety, and Ren squeezed Rey's hand just slightly, "Don't speak. I will reply for the both of us. You needn't worry."

 

Her countenance was of a queen as she nodded placidly, _silently_. Kylo Ren trudged forward in newfound ease; she had bestowed to him her faith already.

 

* * *

 

There were seven, three on each side of the grand throne opposite of Kylo Ren and the Jedi's seats at the table. Seven figures, alien and strange to the girl.

 

She itched to inquire their names, to give herself something to call them, but Kylo Ren's constant flittering presence in her mind sealed her lips.

 

In him, she felt something peculiar- not the loneliness she had sensed before, but an uneasy maelstrom of worry, _fear_. He was afraid, but not simply that. He feared for _her_.

 

The conclave murmured amongst themselves, though the pair were not addressed in their conversation. Rey couldn't deny the release of nerves inside her as she listened submissively to the seven unfamiliar First Order leaders deliberate before her.

 

She was unaware of Kylo Ren's pensive eyes, tracing her face.

 

He studied her intently, the dark rouge color of her lips, the flakes of rich hazel in her eyes, the way the brilliant diamond jewelry reflected against her porcelain skin. Shifting his arm gently, only then was he reminded of their palms still clutching one another's.

 

He peered down to their locked hands.

 

The desert he was seemed quenched for a feeble moment, his heart full of an unfamiliar light trailing back to the Jedi beside him. He knew her, even before their first encounter on Takodana. She filled his visions, his destiny as long forewarned, though fated to vanish once he drew too close.

 

She was his mirage.

 

Kylo Ren heaved a breath and closed his eyes, savoring her simple touch in his decision.

 

He would still cling to her until she, too, disappeared.

 

"And, what of your little Jedi, Kylo Ren?"

 

The knight's stare flipped upward to his master, now interrogating him amidst the conclave's discussion, but Ren's voice ignored every urge of his to speak.

 

Snoke, turning to his wicked companions in a sneer, prodded the boy once again, "You must detest the weakness she's buried in you since you are to thwart it."

 

Kylo Ren stiffened.

 

"What is he talking about?" Rey's voice was so timid that the man almost did not realize she had spoken.

 

He clenched his fingers around her hand as if in warning, but he did not respond to either spoken statement.

 

Snoke glowered as he sat himself back against his titanium throne, "It is no matter. We will find another vessel and be sure to rid ourselves of the present one."

 

Kylo Ren, in alarm, opened his clamped mouth to defy the Supreme Leader, to remind Snoke of the promise of Rey's security he had gifted his pupil.

 

The king of a table of pawns, however, tugged the strings of orchestration once more, "Council adjourned."

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo Ren stormed up the freighter ship's lowered ramp, his boots clamoring against the metal floor as Rey bolted after him in a rampage.

 

"What was that?!"

 

Her voice pierced the quiet shuttle hallway while the port door hummed until it bolted itself shut.

 

Kylo Ren shoved a hand through his charcoal hair, pivoting away from Rey who had then bore tears.

 

"Snoke said you're... you're ridding yourselves of me!" she cried.

 

Ah, so she'd understood _that_.

 

He huffed and embraced the rage brewing in his stomach, cultivating the well of fury which fueled his power.

 

"I had spoken to him of security- for _you_!"

 

"Consider it a job well done, Ren," she scoffed with a crooked, gravel voice.

 

Kylo spun around to her and charged to where she stood with arms crossed, "I was trying to shield you from the only reason you're still alive, to provide you what little shelter I could, to be your _ally_! He promised me he would still not touch you, no matter if I would not either or if you had no use to us anymore! Snoke vowed that, and I am not responsible for this sudden contradiction!"

 

Rey widened her tear-filled gaze, rubbing the mascara pooling below her eyes as she whimpered sullenly, "Why would you- what did you say to him...?"

 

Kylo Ren's chest thumped with the unhinged beat of his pulse.

 

"I told him you were barren."

 

The Jedi halted in horrific confusion.

 

"That way, he would not bother you, and there would be no expectations of anything you are unwilling to offer," Ren's stare wandered to the glimmering, metallic floor.

 

Rey's fingers drifted unconsciously to her abdomen as she gradually closed her eyes. The same scorching fire from before bled from her frail heart, and she could not evade the soft curl of her lips as she carried her chin up to her ally once more.

 

"You were protecting me?"

 

The man's gaze flickered silently.

 

Rey stepped forward, overwhelmed by the heat flooding her figure, compelled by an unbidden force between them. Her hands wrapped around his waist, her head fell upon his chest, his heart pounded beneath her ear.

 

Kylo Ren looked down to his mirage, cautious to lay a shaky hand on her shoulder as if she were to fade with his touch. But, Rey remained, and he hesitantly received her embrace, placing his other palm against her mop of amber locks.

 

"Thank you."

 

She whispered before she stepped backward and away, disappearing to the corridor beside them.

 

Ren studied his palms, which tingled with the remembrance of the woman they had held.

 

His gaze flew to the empty hallway; he had been wrong.

 

Kylo Ren was a desert, but Rey was his oasis.

 

In a crumbling sigh, he shut his eyes. 

 

He was a desert, yet never had an oasis left him so empty before.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO sorry for such a delay in uploading! I've been on vacation, and the time to write escaped me. I have a vocal camp this weekend, but after that, posting should be regular again.
> 
> Again, thank you to all you fantabulous people for sticking with this story to Chapter Seven! (wow, are we already that far?)
> 
> And, also a huge thank you to all of you lovely folks who've left kudos and comments on this work. Your outreach means the world to me!
> 
> Anyway, I wish you all the best, and happy reading!


	6. The Star That Burned for Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I will love the light for it shows me the way,  
> yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars."
> 
> -Og Mandino
> 
> (Also, warning of a dark thematic sequence in this chapter)

The little Jedi studied her reflection, setting her palms on her platinum vanity.

 

The chalky framework of her mascara had seeped into the puffy sockets below her exhausted eyes, and she noted the cracking lines of foundation beaded atop her forehead. She lifted a hand to her face in a sigh.

 

It seemed not even a lifetime on Jakku matched the anxiety swarming her entrapment among the First Order nor the dread.

 

Rey frowned, encountering the swollen ache that punctured her solace once more.

 

This was to be the end, she knew.

 

What a cruel twist of fate for such an act of innocence to cripple the future in its own unjust way.

 

He had meant to protect her- something which stirred her heart in a way she loathed.

 

Kylo Ren had bestowed her a shield from their unruly puppeteer, yet he had forgotten one could not so simply sever the strings of Snoke's manipulation.

 

Rey felt the steady waterfall of time, dripping away gradually but surely alongside her own numbered moments. She had expected nothing less, _craved_ this end to her slavery even. At last, she might see her friends again, her teacher, her parents long forgotten. Rey had begged so mercilessly for her own demise; it suited the force to finally answer her beckoning cry.

 

But, now she stood at the gaping void, and she was aghast at her dissatisfaction.

 

Perhaps, she had wished for a downfall by her own hands- not of _Snoke's_.

 

Rey clutched the vanity before her, sensing its grim lights flicker on her skin with the movement.

 

Opening her eyes as the heat of her breath fogged the mirror, she made her decision.

 

It would not be the Supreme Leader who spun her fate; no strings controlled her but the ones she had sewn inside herself.

 

The Jedi alone weaved her destiny.

 

Rey broke from her trance only by the rattling of a knock on her door. She was surprised the First Order carried even that much decency.

 

"What is it?"

 

She had not felt her shaking breath until her voice quivered aloud.

 

While the door to her room slid away, Rey composed herself as best she could, wiping away the feathers of wispy hair stuck to her sweat-ridden face.

 

Two stormtroopers stood at the bedroom's entrance.

 

Rey failed to wave her disappointment that, waiting for her, it was not indeed  _him_.

 

Instead, she held herself higher, a queen as she had been among the conclave. She would not splinter her serene gaze in front of anyone of the First Order, not again. Rey was to be feared, for she knew the power of her vengeance buried in her own heart.

 

The lefthand trooper stepped toward her, "The Supreme Leader has requested your presence in his chambers."

 

The thrum of Rey's pulse halted.

 

_So soon?_

 

And, what of her ally? Where was he? Or, had his master conveniently forgotten to inform him of this, too?

 

"Of course," Rey's tongue glided gracefully atop the words as the stormtroopers grabbed her wrists and heaved her gruffly into the dimly lit hallway.

 

The Jedi did not need a Knight to save her.

 

She would rescue herself.

 

In a blur, Rey swung her hand up and against the cold, pleated armor of the stormtrooper to her right, knocking him away as she swiped the gun from his fingers and swung back to blast his companion. After the fire of a crimson bullet, he flew to the floor, and Rey seized the fleeting moment and dashed from the pair, lugging the blaster at her side.

 

"Stop her!" She heard the first stormtrooper's muffled voice demand, but her eyes remained focused on only the prize of her freedom.

 

As she sprinted aimlessly through the maze of metal corridors, a curious pinging resounded against he walls beside her. Rey peeked behind herself to spy a squadron of troopers with blasters aimed.

 

They were _firing_.

 

In a grunt, she lifted her weapon, releasing a swarming inferno in reply.

 

 _What value she must have been to them_. Rey could feel herself scoff amidst her uneven breaths.

 

She narrowed her gaze, turning a corner in a plume of ignorance.

 

_Kill me, then._

 

Rey coughed as she staggered down the corridors, woozy with disarray. However, her disorientation did not weaken her, and with each approaching blast of a gun, she unleashed the strength to persevere.

 

The girl was a Jedi, but she did not need a lightsaber to make herself a warrior.

 

Her hands were her weapons, pulsing with the might of the force as she struck away the legions of troopers with single, invisible blows. She bore the gun still, and for those she could not sweep away in the force's vast reign, the gun proved a worthy comrade, blasting the few adversary the force had missed.

 

Yet, it resisted.

 

The _force_.

 

Rey could only muster enough strength to stun the troopers, not finish them.

 

She struggled against the force's battering cries.

 

 _It is not your time, dear child- your destiny is not your own_.

 

Rey shot another trooper in a cry, swinging toward the only door in sight as an entire squadron of soldiers marched down the corridor.

 

_Then, I will it make it mine._

 

The Jedi pressed a hand to the door, and it fell to the side. She stumbled through the entryway into an abyss, locking the escape temporarily shut behind herself.

 

Rey lifted her eyes to discover her new surroundings laid outside the First Order base itself. She examined the darkness of the planet quietly.

 

She had never seen outside the building.

 

The base itself fared no different from the inside than out, but Rey could not anticipate the planet itself. She did not know its name, but it was strangely... beautiful.

 

A rigid contradiction to the dictatorship occupying it- the planet flourished in the void of night. Plants glowed placidly against the building's cement walls while small, bioluminescent creatures flittered above the planet's shy jungle. Rey spun to the balcony she stood upon, gazing to the violet sky in search of an absent moon and finding the stars in its wake.

 

She drew a peaceful breath, forgetting momentarily the danger awaiting her behind the closed building door.

 

The forest rumbled warmly with the hum of life. Rey shut her eyes and filled her lungs once more; this air felt free.

 

A curious thundering noise peeled open again her eyelids, and she stepped to the tip of the balcony.

 

Below her spewed the immense rapids of a waterfall.

 

 _Their energy_. The base sat atop a dam.

 

She eyed the drop to the rivine's bottom, estimating less than a hundred feet or so, but her stare wandered wistfully back to the moonless sky.

 

A billow of ebony clouds rippled across the twilight sunset, and Rey gazed at the sprinkle of flickering stars buried in the charcoal haze.

 

She wondered longingly if one of these stars, just one, could burn so brightly for _her_.

 

The answer to her question fell in the opening of the base's entrance, and Rey pivoted back to the bleak building as a line of stormtroopers stormed the balcony.

 

"Drop your weapon! I said, drop it!" The commander held a blaster to the girl, who stood with arms raised.

 

"As you wish." Rey fingered the cold gun in her hands before it fell to the ground in an iron clamor, and the commander's minions dashed to capture their Supreme Leader's coveted prize.

 

The little Jedi, however, looked to the sky once more, her burning star a hopeless dream. She raised her arms level to her collar, and her figure tipped slowly over the balcony's side.

 

She jumped.

 

The water was frigid, and Rey had not realized she'd been submerged so soon until the ache of the impact clattered through her muscles.

 

Her hair bounced flimsily with the subtle current while the girl peered upward as she sank lower into the pool's depths. She reached an arm to the surface and screamed through bubbles.

 

The Jedi could not swim.

 

There had been nowhere to learn on the desert Jakku.

 

Thrashing in the shallows, Rey cursed the force once more for her luck, this unfair punishment. The wise beast, however, chimed.

 

_You control your fate now, do you not?_

 

The Jedi shouted, only to inhale the water encasing her as she stared hopelessly to the glimmering light of the slate sky piercing the river above.

 

 _I take it back_! Rey's movements grew stiff and mechanical in the dense water as the supply of her breath shriveled.

 

 _Only to save or to truly redeem yourself_? The mysterious being called once more.

 

Rey's eyes blurred and closed gradually as she grew silent and still in her sudden understanding.  _I am the master of my destiny but not who controls it._

 

The force was quiet.

 

Were it not for her empty breath, the girl would have collapsed in a crumbling sob, and her chin rose toward the pool's surface as if to reach for the earth in one final hurrah.

 

She thought of the people awaiting this moment, the people she loved, those she would see again.

 

She thought of her freedom and how this would be the only way to grasp it. But, the girl mourned that she was destined, even in death, to remain alone.

 

She thought of the force and its teachings, her arrogance which led to this. The Jedi understood now, yet forgiveness feigned too late.

 

She thought of the First Order. Would this be the only clockwork of her revenge? Or would this be surrender?

 

She was fading at last.

 

Rey thought of her star, impossible and unfathomable, but she would not resign, calling for it just the same.

 

 _I'm here, save me, I'm here_!

 

A steadfast hand latched onto her wrist.

 

_I've found you._

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo Ren dragged Rey's body through the gentle, lapping waves of the river's shallows, coughing and grunting as he heaved her onto the shore.

 

He lifted a shaky finger to the stormtroopers who stood, anticipating his next command behind him, " _Go_ , get the med staff..."

 

"But, Master Ren, the Supreme Leader requested-"

 

"Go!" Kylo shrieked in reply before kneeling down beside an unconscious Rey.

 

He cupped the sides of her face, testing to scour her pulse while he leaned down to her lips. His fingers tugged at her mouth so that he might force his own breath into her lungs, and his hands pressed firmly against her chest. After several compressions, he pushed just under her chin, still soaked by the rapids.

 

No pulse.

 

"Damnit, Rey!" He screamed, bewildered by the barren sadness filling his anger, but he slammed his hands against her chest again and again, "You can't leave me!"

 

All he had done, everything he had chosen was for her, to protect her, yet she was so eager to throw herself away. His humiliation among the conclave, the grief for his family no matter their side of the war, the beatings he'd endured from Snoke, everything he suffered for _her_.

 

Kylo Ren choked out something closest only to a sob, his hands still pushing against her limp body.

 

Did she not see how much he lov-

 

Rey arched forward in a cough as she gagged on a mouthful of water. Kylo Ren stumbled backward in a mixture of shock and wonder, but he briskly scooped her up and forward off the dampened, marsh ground.

 

She rattled another sickening cough as she raised a faint hand against Ren's chest to wave him away while she wheezed into the palm of her hand.

 

Kylo Ren did not abide, instead holding the back of her head tenderly so that she might breath easier as he exclaimed with glossy eyes, "What were you thinking...?!"

 

Rey turned to him, slowly lifting her gaze to his own burning scowl; the vulnerable _care_ in his voice startled her.

 

The Jedi huffed on another drowned breath before she collapsed against him weakly, "I-I... wasn't..."

 

Kylo clutched her cautiously and raised her head again to free her airway while Rey's frail hand landed thoughtlessly against his cheek.

 

He let his nose brush against the top of her stringy, soaked hair until he gripped the cape on his shoulders, tearing it off to swaddle the shivering woman in his arms. Ren studied her solemnly as he pulled her back against his chest.

 

Even soaking wet and unconscious, she was a gem, shimmering in beauty, but perhaps she was something far more untamable than a stone. Ren realized he held the day, the sun's fire, and in her unopened eyes reflected the splintering night and its sky of stars.

 

"There they are!"

 

Kylo Ren peered upwards to spy his troopers and the med staff shadowed silently by Snoke and his own crimson guard.

 

The Supreme Leader narrowed his gaze, uncaringly scrutinizing the pitiful scavenger.

 

"What is the meaning of this, Kylo Ren?"

 

The Knight glanced nervously to his Jedi, her breath weak against his armored chest, but in his wife he found no inspiration for a lie.

 

Snoke glowered sullenly, "This is exactly why we were to eliminate this minuscule annoyance earlier-"

 

"She has no purpose here!" Kylo Ren screamed without hesitation, "You were to kill her if she remained where she was, and you expect her to submit to that! She's a warrior, a Jedi! She needs training, you know that as well as I do, Supreme Leader!  _Train_ her! You can use her as a soldier if nothing else! Give her _meaning_ here, master..."

 

The Supreme Leader gaped warily at his apprentice, but Ren mumbled dejectedly again, "I'll train her, master, I will teach her. I... I will prove to you she is of worth if you will _let_ me."

 

Rey fidgeted slightly in his grasp, and Kylo Ren secured his cloak around her delicately, "Please, master..."

 

His cheeks stung with his words; Kylo Ren did not beg.

 

But, the Supreme Leader straightened his vile figure- _impressed_. His amber gaze flickered between the broken apprentice and the Jedi who had shattered him in the first place.

 

With a grueling hiss, the Supreme Leader moved his venomous tongue, "Very well."

 

As Kylo Ren caved into his relief, Snoke trekked briskly with his guards toward the base, and the troopers followed.

 

Ren watched them disappear before scanning the woman in his arms as the medical staff rushed to his side. Gently, he gave Rey to the nurses awaiting her, and she, too, alongside the team vanished bleakly from his sight.

 

Kylo Ren exhaled sharply.

 

Wiping off his muddy trousers, he trudged through the jungle to the base's entrance in silence.

 

He had found her.

 

Kylo Ren smiled softly to himself as he eyed the night sky, smothered in stars.

 

If only she, too, would find him.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have finally returned (fingers crossed)! From here on out, I hope to have a chapter published about every few days or so, and I'm looking forward to getting to all the plotwists sure to come ;)
> 
> Thank yOU awesome people for reading! And, especially, I give my endless love to you awesome commenters and those who leave kudos. Your small gesture means so very much!
> 
> The next portion of this work should be more comical than all this melodramatic stuff, and I do promise sooooo much more romance soon and a few other things, too.
> 
> Anyway, thank you once again for reading! You guys inspire me! 
> 
> Have a wonderful day and read on!


	7. A Dance of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When love beckons to you, follow him,  
> Though his ways are hard and steep.  
> And when his wings enfold you yield to him,  
> Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you."
> 
> -Khalil Gibran
> 
> (Finally some fluff and dare I say real Reylo?)
> 
> (And, also, warning that a dark thematic element from the previous chapter is briefly mentioned here.)

The chalky pills clacked against their tangerine pigmented bottle, and Rey examined the label skeptically.

 

Kylo Ren leaned against the ivory wall opposing her while his eyes cautiously traced her every movement, wading the blur of emotions seeping through their bond.

 

There were no bruises painting her arms from the fall any longer, no crimson flowers blooming in the whites of her eyes. She appeared much healthier than the night he had dragged her through the muddy bank of the river to safety, but a cotton hospital gown still adorned her less frail looking figure. 

 

"'Flouxetine,' 'sertraline,' 'citalopram,'" Rey mumbled the ingredients scripted on the label before she held up the bottle of pills itself, "What are these?"

 

Kylo Ren tapped a finger onto his folded arms, "Antidepressants."

 

The Jedi's face contorted sourly as she placed the medicine bottle on the table beside her hospital bed.

 

"I don't need these."

 

It was Ren's turn to encounter disappointment. "I had your doctor prescribe them for you against his own recommendation-"

 

Rey's pitiful figure, however, silenced him as she reached a hand up to her hunched shoulders in a whisper. "I didn't want to kill myself."

 

"You jumped off a cliff down a ravine almost a hundred feet deep, Rey. What else did you think would happen?" Kylo Ren stepped forward in an arousal of fury at the selfishness in her words, how she did not realize the weight of her choices and the toll they'd reaped on him.

 

He hadn't left the infirmary once since her arrival. Kylo paced the hallway outside her room endlessly, annoying the nurses with the constant clacking of his boots against the metal floor. He didn't care, nor did he listen when a pair of stormtroopers sought to fetch him for his Supreme Leader. Whether awake or asleep, Ren had watched her, studied her, savored her presence in a way he had not before.

 

To see her slip lifelessly through his hands- _like his father_...- reopened a wounded crevice in his heart he had not even known was there.

 

"Snoke summoned me, he was going to-to..." Rey's quiet words tore at the fabric of his injury, "I wanted to _escape_."

 

Kylo Ren's throat grew dry as he watched the Jedi rub her shiny eyes with the back of her palm.

 

 _It's your fault_. The voice, that same voice taunted him.

 

This had been his apology, his constant presence by Rey's bedside, but it was not enough.

 

"You shouldn't have saved me. Snoke is going to punish us- you. He'll kill me this time, Ren, he will _kill_ me," Her voice splintered with a shattered cry.

 

Kylo stepped forward instinctively.

 

"I won't let him touch you."

 

Rey masked her tear-filled face with her hands, "We stand no chance against what he says... As long as I am simply your useless scavenger, he'll demand that I am discarded along with the rest of his assets harboring wasted space-"

 

"You are not just a scavenger," Ren spoke defensively, his eyes full of fury, "You are Rey the warrior, the Jedi. You frighten him, and that's why he wants so desperately to exile you."

 

Rey peeked through her fingers to spy him at the edge of her bed, a hand on the mattress and the other resting at his side as he leaned forward to speak these dangerous whispers.

 

"He wants you trained, now, to tame you." This was casual, almost too nonchalant; Kylo was anticipating her question soon to follow.

 

Surely, she sat forward, prying her hands from her face, "Snoke is going to train me?"

 

"No."

 

The faint yet proud smirk on Ren's face betrayed his gruff, one-worded reply.

 

" _I_ am."

  

* * *

 

"I'm supposed to train with _this_?" Rey inquired skeptically as she swung a skinny, wooden stick around in her hands.

 

Kylo Ren eyed her from across the training room, wiping the titanium hilt of his lightsaber with a ragged cloth, "We have to start somewhere."

 

"I'm not using this," the Jedi frowned and held the stick out toward him, "I know how to fight with a _real_ weapon-"

 

"You don't have a real weapon," he countered and pointed his sheathed blade toward her, meanwhile Rey fingered through her chestnut hair, pulling it back into a bun.

 

"Oh, and I wonder whose fault that is-"

 

"I couldn't give it back to you even if I wanted to," Ren mustered what was his attempt of an apology, "Snoke confiscated it, and I wouldn't be all that surprised if he had destroyed it entirely."

 

Rey's splitting gaze narrowed at him. A venomous anger pumped through her veins that he would let Snoke obliterate something of his own family's, something that meant so much to her, something he had coveted so lustfully.

 

"Give me a different saber." Rey set the flimsy stick on an obsidian bench beside herself.

 

"No." Kylo Ren barely offered her a glance away from cleaning his own blade.

 

The Jedi folded her arms and stepped toward him with a lighthearted smirk, "Afraid I'll beat you again?"

 

"Oh, please," he scoffed, his lips faintly curling into a smile, "I let you win-"

 

"You did not!" Rey strove to maintain her annoyance, but a weak laugh escaped her even so, "And, anyway, it seems hardly fair that _you_ get a lightsaber that would easily slice through the twig you gave _me_."

 

Her counterpart resigned to a sigh as he placed his weapon on a display shelf and marched across the training floor to her, "We won't begin duels yet. Today, I want to teach you proper posture and form."

 

"So, you _are_  worried you'll lose again," Rey teased, shadowing him with an upturned chin while he waded across the combat floor again towards the glass case holding their practice weaponry.

 

He almost released a chuckle. "You think so, Rey? Why would I be showing you these things to _improve_ your skills, then?"

 

The Jedi halted in a brooding silence.

 

"Well, it might... be... to... Snoke! He, uh, he asked you... to-"

 

In her stammering, she had yet to notice Kylo Ren opening the weaponry case, and with the slightest flick of his fingers, a training sword tumbled from out of its place and into his palm as he maneuvered it swiftly up and against the tip of Rey's chin. She had no time to even stumble backward before he narrowed his gaze, "You'd be dead if I were a real enemy."

 

Pushing away his wooden blade in a concoction of humiliation and disgust, Rey shoved past him toward the remaining weapons, "That wasn't fair-"

 

"Combat isn't fair," Ren brushed off his bare forearm and strung his fingers through his mop of messy locks, studying Rey as she selected her practice blade, "Do you think your adversary is going to play _fair_?"

 

"I must be accustomed to sympathetic villains," she goaded and pivoted back to him, adorned with a sword as her weapon and a smile as armor, "Considering the last man I fought even _let_ me win-"

 

"Can we begin?" He rolled his eyes, masking his amusement, and Rey lifted her blade in reply.

 

In one mighty conclusion, Kylo Ren swung his sword toward hers and knocked her weapon to the floor in an act of sheer force.

 

The Jedi's eyes moved to him in a mortified glower, "I thought you were going to _teach_ me-"

 

" _I_ thought you said you were ready," he chimed, and Rey begrudgingly reached for her weapon again, donning a new, fiery resolve.

 

The afternoon unfolded this way- Rey constantly discovering herself vanquished again and again by way of Ren's aptitude and unending resilience. The period between which their matches began and when Kylo conquered her once more increased gradually.

 

"You're improving," he would find himself saying in worry of her resigning in utter hopelessness.

 

However, the little Jedi failed to disappoint.

 

Each defeat only fanned the flame of her determination, and she delved further into the well which fed them both. At moments, there were indistinct silences aside from both of their short, tired breaths, for the two began to move as one in the mass of their bond. Their planned assaults and strikes were no longer secret as each's movement synchronized with the other's.

 

It was a deadly tango, yet neither dancer faltered with the music's blooming crescendos.

 

"Your feet aren't close enough." Kylo Ren aimed to disperse these moments of unison if only to strengthen his ally as a warrior, and the Jedi _listened_.

 

She was bewildered to find his advice truly helpful.

 

"Why is it that Snoke needs soldiers? There aren't any more great enemies for him to defeat," she grunted curiously, lunging forward with her blade.

 

Ren blocked her attack in a struggle, his voice fracturing just slightly to convolute his words, "There will still be those who rebel against us. The Outer Rim hasn't even been touched by our government's reign, so the danger there has yet to be uncovered."

 

Despite the distasteful aura of a lie, Rey continued to thrash her sword toward him, "So, this will be my new purpose here?"

 

"It's what will protect you," Ren evaded another crippling blow, "I promised you that."

 

Rey readjusted her grip and brandished her sword aggressively, unaware of how sloppy her form had grown, "Snoke must be disappointed-"

 

"I don't care about the Supreme Leader, Rey, don't you see?!" he flourished his sword in a spurt of anger, beginning to drive her backward as their blades remained cemented, " _I_ asked to train you! I wanted to prove to him that you are powerful, that you _are_ a Jedi!"

 

Kylo Ren's rage engulfed what weaved their souls together, and Rey tumbled to the ground against his strength and fervor. He hammered her wooden blade out of her fingers onto the ground in a furious clatter before he fell atop the Jedi, his knees anchored beside either of her hips. He threw his own sword across the room in a livid exclamation, and Rey squirmed away from him fearfully. Kylo Ren's eyes snapped to her sudden movement.

 

He slammed a hand beside the Jedi's head, his face mere inches from her own. Rey whimpered quietly, though her resistance of his grip did nothing but fasten her fate. His scorching breath billowed against her nose in labored, feral pulses, but his voice blossomed in a peculiar insecurity.

 

"Are you afraid of me?"

 

Rey drew her timid gaze up to the man still pinning her to the floor, though a volatile flower budded in her stomach, winding its way through her figure with flaming leaves of a passion that frightened her.

 

He was looking at her carefully, worriedly; regret had disguised his face. He shifted above her, his torso brushing against hers, and Rey wriggled underneath the weight of his chest as if to escape the torrent of emotions brewing in her veins.

 

At the sight of her hesitation, his face softened suddenly.

 

"I'm sorry."

 

He spoke gently as he retracted away from her, sitting up.

 

The Jedi gaped at the Knight while the pressure of his body gradually fell away, but a temptation fluttered inside her.

 

She succumbed.

 

Rey's hand barreled forward and clutched onto the silk fabric of his shirt as she guided his perplexed face down once more to hers. His tunic was so thin that she could feel the way his chest rose and fell against her fingertips, the way his throat bobbed anxiously above her, the way his eyes widened as they watched her own. His scraggly hair skimmed her sweaty forehead, and Rey studied the way his lips quivered so slightly as if to say they were his brushes; he wanted to paint every inch of her skin.

 

"I am not afraid of you." She cooed, almost provoked.

 

Kylo Ren placed his coarse palms beside her face and shut his eyes, his nose sweeping against her flushed cheek as he dared to accept her challenge-

 

The training room door opened unexpectedly with a clatter, an unconcerned voice following it, "Master Ren, I've been tasked to fetch you for this evening's meeting-"

 

The Knight practically lept off of Rey, retrieving his training stick and hurling it at the protocol droid who'd entered the room, "Get out! Get out, damnit!"

 

The robot reeled backward toward the door in terror, and Kylo swung to the Jedi who'd begun recollecting herself off the floor, "I'm sorry about that-"

 

"Don't apologize," she waved a disoriented hand toward him.

 

He waited awkwardly as she wiped the dust from the floor off her pants and collected her belongings until she finally peered back at him, mortification of their intimacy flooding her face, "I think we, um... the training has exhausted us both today. We aren't ourselves anymore."

 

Kylo Ren nodded quietly in agreement; he shoved away how her disregarding words ached inside him.

 

The Jedi had turned from him, recovering her satchel from the ground, "You should probably follow the droid to your meeting."

 

As she strode in the opposite direction of him, Ren felt a million words pass over his tongue, but none were spoken as she reached the room entryway.

 

However, Rey paused and glanced back to his waiting figure, "Ren?"

 

"Yes?" He spoke too eagerly, but he feared not for hiding his hope because it poured from Rey herself. He was pathetic- a sympathic villain after all. Yet, he studied her longingly just the same.

 

Her eyes plunged to the floor before she raised her hesitant gaze to the man at last, subduing his desire in a blow far more fatal than their dance of swords. 

 

"I'm sorry, too."

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Wow, what a day for The Last Jedi news. I'm not sure my heart can take any more of this suspense!
> 
> Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter; it took a lOT out of me to write, but I think I've reached the outcome I wanted. You may also notice I've update some of the story tags and the description, but that's just because I can't keep my mouth shut about this story's plot anymore ;)
> 
> You guys are absolutely incredible!! I am so overwhelmed with the love of the Reylo community, just in general everywhere I go in this fandom. Everyone is always supporting one another, and that's what makes our fandom truly special.
> 
> This week hasn't been going very well for me, so I'd actually like to dedicate this chapter to three wonderful people- @All_The_Feels, @Blackeyedlily, and @Nina10. 
> 
> The first two of these amazing ladies (forgive me if I assumed wrongly!) have stuck it out with this work since practically the beginning, which is quite an endeavor considering how experimental and inconsistent this fic has been. Almost every time I update, the two of them are always commenting the sweetest things, and I can't express how much their support means to me! (Along with anyone else who's tagged along for the adventure of this fic (: ) Thank you both for keeping this work afloat!
> 
> I'm also dedicating this chapter to @Nina10 because her comment spoke to me at a moment where I really needed reaffirmation in this story. Thank you for being a light in a moment when I was wandering alone in the dark!
> 
> There have been so many kind words over the course of this work's publication, not necessarily as many as other fics around, but that gives me the opportunity to appreciate and really thank all of you who have reached out to me. It astounds me and fills my heart that a simple statement of five words or less can invoke such an emotion inside myself. You guys are the heart of this fic, and I cannot thank you all enough for staying with me. <3
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all have a fantastic week, and happy reading!


	8. Fish of the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Doubt thou the stars are fire,  
> Doubt that the sun doth move.  
> Doubt truth to be a liar,  
> But never doubt I love."
> 
> ~William Shakespeare

A billow of wind feathered the wisps of hair alongside Rey's face.

 

She sucked in a breath and released the earthy air as another warm wave of breeze stroked her skin.

 

The constant pound of the waterfall below evaporated from her mind, and Rey closed her eyes, content in the absence of her star.

 

The sunset burned below her lids as she glimpsed the golden streams of light even with eyes threaded shut.

 

A tranquil thrum of life echoed around her.

 

Tiny creatures loomed in the pockets of jungle overhanging the First Order base, and their incoherent cries emptied the silence of the wilderness.

 

Rey relished the freedom bestowed by the untamable forests of the planet. Perhaps, this was why she had crept from her room in a trance to escape once more from the suffocating halls of the Base. The maker only knew the punishment in store for her upon her return, yet she did not heed the yearns of protest inside her mind.

 

The Jedi remained.

 

A tickle along her cheek sprung open her eyes, and Rey turned to spy a swirl of leaves wandering past her, adrift on the air's current. The sky was an ocean, but Rey found in this sea she could swim. She leaned over the balcony's railing and studied the plunging rapids below, small trickles of water spraying against her skin as she dared to reach a hand-

 

"Rey!"

 

A pair of burly arms latched onto her torso and pried her from the ground, and the Jedi flailed in her captor's grip as she moved to discover Kylo Ren dragging her away from the balcony's edge.

 

Her hands clasped onto his arms, "Let go of me-!"

 

"Rey..." he obeyed and released her as she stumbled away from him, but his worried eyes lingered on her face, "I thought you told me..."

 

The Jedi noticed his gaze travel to the balcony's edge before she sputtered, embarrassed by the accusation, "I wasn't thinking about- _kriff_ , Ren, I wasn't going to jump!"

 

Kylo Ren watched her closely as she brushed the skin of her shoulders her tunic did not cover.

 

"Where have you been?" This anger was twisted, a torsion of pitiful anguish; he spoke with dejection rather than force. "My soldiers have been searching for you all evening, Rey. We were supposed to train-"

 

"I don't want to practice in there," she spun from him toward the sunset in the distance. The gleam of the horizon blinded all which she saw, magnifying the jungle beyond the falls in sweltering beauty. The trees were emerald embers, dotting the scorched sky, and the night cowered from the light's exquisite rage.

 

Kylo Ren stepped toward her, but a thoughtful silence overpowered his tongue.

 

From behind, it seemed the sun beamed from Rey's figure, distant sparks erupting in the cataclysmic birth of twilight. The sky's reflection painted the tips of the Jedi's hair a soft gold, and Kylo moved beside her so that he might study the way her face, too, washed away in an amber glow.

 

"Could we train out here?" Rey looked to him with a hopeful grin.

 

He was always fond of her smile.

 

The Jedi peered back to the burning sky in his quiet, and Kylo Ren followed her back to the horizon.

 

As long as the sun flourished in its radiant luster, the star could not smolder against her intoxicating light.

 

* * *

  

"Up." 

 

The staff in Rey's hand swung upward unconsciously as Kylo Ren beside her mirrored the same with his own training stick.

 

He glanced to her arms in a nod, "Posture."

 

The Jedi lifted her chest and reaped a gradual breath from their surroundings.

 

They stood on the balcony above the falls in the dimness of twilight. The golden sun had melted into a rich violet, and it engulfed the sky in the quiet flare of the stars above them.

 

"Across."

 

Both weapons glided against the air at the same pace as the chorus of creatures in the jungle sang sweetly the melody of the Jedi and her Knight's beating hearts.

 

"Down."

 

The staffs hit the cement ground in unison with a hushed ruckus.

 

Rey exhaled a short breath and reached for the clumps of sweat looming below her face.

 

Kylo Ren observed her, and he drew his staff to his side. "That's enough for this evening."

 

In a sigh, the Jedi placed her flimsy staff against the balcony's railing while Ren mimicked her in the same. As he reached to collect her staff for her, Rey's eyes fell away to the jungle beside them. A ghostly hum rumbled lowly from the brush.

 

Rey placed a hesitant step toward the rustling trees. At the sight of her presence, the jungle silenced. She paused in wonder, and, in its quiet, the planet flowered in life. A flock of animals materialized in the trees and among the ground. Rey gaped in awe of the world while evening buds unfurled into blooms to emit the softest reflection of the bright moon above. The trees flickered with the light of plants and blossoms alike.

 

The Jedi trailed toward this cave of wonders.

 

As she reached where cement disintegrated into forest floor, Rey's eyes flipped up to the wilderness once more. She was greeted by a peculiar glimmer of sapphire. The unfamiliar light pulsed faintly as it emerged closer than before.

 

It was a creature.

 

"What is that?" the Jedi turned to her Knight who had not noticed her exploration, still occupied with organizing their practice weaponry. 

 

Kylo Ren glanced toward her and strode to where she stood, discerning the planet's secrets unveiled by the moon.

 

The azure creature bounced serenely upon the air's tide, carving a stream of sparkling light with its ivory fins. It was almost translucent, a bioluminescent beast that glistened under the night sky. As it floundered gently between the trees, a mirror of itself emerged quietly followed by another while their herd gradually multiplied.

 

Rey gazed wistfully until another of the beings soared past her from behind. It circled the Jedi and her Knight to reveal a train of the creatures, each gliding quietly in a display of cobalt constellations.

 

The Jedi's eyes wandered to Kylo Ren, whose face had been lit softly in blue light. The pits of his eyes glinted with the creatures' benevolent swarm, and he spoke tenderly as if to not frighten them, " _Maravem_. Fish of the sky."

 

A tender chirp resounded among the flock while Kylo's eyes found Rey.

 

"Can I show you something?"

 

The Jedi watched cautiously as he opened a palm toward the maravem. Rey doubted how beings of such light could attract to something so abysmal and foul, yet one of the creatures waded the air's vastness to Kylo's outstretched hand. It purred and wiggled against his fingers, and the man released a choked noise.

 

He laughed.

 

Rey studied him in the pale glow of the fish, replaying the sound in her mind; she doubted she would hear it again.

 

Kylo felt her gaze, and he turned to her with a weak grin, "Here, open your hands."

 

Hesistance flooded Rey at his proposition while the man exhaled in another hoarse laugh.

 

"It's not going to bite."

 

Reluctantly, she raised her palms toward him, and the maravem slithered from his hands to hers, chirping giddily as Rey too found herself sighing with a giggle. Her stare, however, drifted back to Ren, "How do you know how to handle these?"

 

"I was a curious, little boy once upon a time," he surveyed the throb of lights around them with a soft smile, "The last time I did this, I was with my fa-"

 

Kylo Ren clamped his mouth shut immediately.

 

In his abrupt silence, Rey turned to him worriedly, but his gaze conveyed no anguish- only fury.

 

The Jedi held the maravem tightly, "You can talk about him with me."

 

Ren's face twisted into a crooked scowl while he moved his eyes to the barren ground.

 

The Jedi was not discouraged, however, and her hand shifted to his shoulder. But, the man retched from her grip, "Don't-"

 

"I never knew my family," the light of the maravem flickered between them as shards of ice, "They left me alone on a desert planet, never to return. I could have died, and they would have never searched for me, never come back, meanwhile your mother led an entire fleet to rescue you. Your father sacrificed himself for you so that you might have had a chance to come home as his son again. Your parents _loved_ you."

 

Kylo Ren's eyes pulsed in a wrathful fire. "That does not mean they didn't also leave _me_."

 

Rey's hand wandered to his clenched jaw, cupping his cheek tenderly.

 

"You cannot change the past... but, your future lays awaiting you, Ren. Isn't it time to let them go...?"

 

The Knight studied her before he reached his fingers underneath her maravem, still surging with translucent light, and their palms intertwined gently as if to hold the creature together.

 

He had stepped toward her, his face hovering just in front of her own as waves of moonlight stained their skin. 

 

Rey leaned up to his ear, his head of ebony locks brushing against her nose, "You don't have to do it alone..."

 

With the sharp intake of his breath, Kylo Ren pressed the maravem up to the sky alongside Rey's hands, and the glowing creature floated toward its flock once more.

 

The man met the woman's stare again, the jungle around them rupturing in vibrant, white color.

 

If he were a star, and she remained tethered to the ground, he would collapse and fall and see how brightly they could burn.

 

The maravem shone beneath the cloak of night's splendor, illuminating the man and the woman to his lips.

 

He kissed her timidly, a sure violation of their alliance, and he retreated swiftly in his fret.

 

The Jedi's face, however, softened in a fervent grin.

 

"Kiss me again."

 

Kylo Ren sought only to obey.

 

His fingers tangled underneath the curls of her hair, trapped as the opposing hand found her flushed cheek. She felt his lips speak forbidden secrets against her own, and she clutched his chest to feel the thump of his heart rage violently. 

 

They were a tragedy, and they would let themselves crumble.

 

Ren's hands slid down the arc of her back as Rey unfastened a gasp and a shiver. He gripped her thighs and hoisted her body up and against his, her waist pressed against his torso while they collapsed along the base's wall in a ricochet of heat and light.

 

Rey dug into his mop of hair, pulling at the coarse strands as his lips grazed over her neck. She could feel his sticky breath trailing a line of steam against her collar, and she buckled underneath the weight of his kisses, her head falling against the wall with a metal ping.

 

He was a match, and she was the fire- Rey would only incinerate him beneath her blazing wings.

 

Kylo Ren held the sun in his hands, yet he begged, _Take your ribbons of light and_ scorch _me_.

 

The Jedi coddled a moan and tumbled toward him, grabbing the sides of his head and prying his face up so that she could kiss him herself this time. The waterfall pounded below them while Kylo pressed her further into the wall, his torso further into her, and slammed a fist beside her, leading the other to her tunic still fluttering against the wind. As Rey sank deeper into his touch, his fingers tugged her shirt away so that his hands might unhook her pants, and-

 

"No." Rey pushed a hand against his shuddering chest.

 

Kylo Ren stared blankly into her eyes, heaving breath after breath.

 

"I... I can't," she mumbled weakly as he released her gently to the ground, both panting in a sweat.

 

"I-I'm sorry..." her voice was a croak in a cry.

 

Before Ren had objected, the Jedi dashed to the building's entrance in a sob, her face masked by tears and humiliation. Kylo Ren observed as she slipped away into nothing, feeling his heart shrivel into the empty abyss of the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all! I hope you're having a lovely evening. I have to apologize for the end of this chapter because I just keep breaking our dynamic duo apart, but here's some good news! That should be the last of their interruptions. OH AND ALSO if you want a visual aid for the maravem, they're kind of a mixture of the jellyfish things from Avatar and the creatures from Maleficent.
> 
> I want to thank you all for keeping up with this work! It's such a surreal experience writing something and having hundreds people you don't even know read it, but it's also probably the coolest thing, too! You guys are the heart of this work, and I can't thank you enough for sticking with it.
> 
> I'd like to dedicate this chapter to three wonderful people as well! @CaraRose, @Heirbritt, and @withmygoldenhairgirl. Your kind words mean so much to me! Thank you for reaching out! All my love and gratitude to you.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all have a blessed day and happy reading!


	9. When the Day Loved the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The dance between darkness and light will always remain—  
> the stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen,  
> the darkness will just not be worth having without the moon and the stars."
> 
> ~ C. Joybell C.
> 
>  
> 
> (An untraditional deconstruction of NSFW writing)
> 
> (Also, please check out @underrated-reylo on tumblr! They made the most beautiful aesthetic for this work, and I just cannot for the life of me figure out how to attach it to the chapter. So, go see it there!)

Rey shifted uncomfortably atop her velvet sheets.

 

There had been no training, no meetings with the conclave. Kylo Ren had not summoned her in days.

 

The Jedi alone was left to wallow in her worry as she fantasized her inevitable demise by the hands of Snoke in countless variations. She bore no purpose any longer if Kylo Ren did not teach her; the Supreme Leader anticipated eagerly the moment he could rid the First Order of their little Jedi.

 

Rey's eyes had closed tightly, but sleep would not obey their beckoning call. It was the sun's tender touch that persuaded her awake, tumbling gently through the ivory blinds of her window.

 

The faint glowing streaks of light on the tile floor served a reminder that it was, in fact, deep into the day, and Rey could not surrender to sleep as she wished she might.

 

Hours had crumbled and drifted away with the dust of the past in a solemn echo.

 

Still, the Jedi lingered where she was despite the silence of the force, of her bond.

 

Perhaps, she feared to face the consequences of her rejection of Ren, or, far more painfully, she cowered now from fate itself. What cruel irony it had been that she craved so desperately for an escape, yet when Rey stood at the edge of the end, she could not find peace within it. She was destined, it seemed, trapped upon the carousel of Snoke's manipulation; with each sickening roundabout, she would be left nothing but to clutch onto her destiny and submit.

 

Rey slid her sore figure off her mattress and strode silently to the platinum vanity seated placidly across the bedroom.

 

It seemed life was a labyrinth, and the Jedi had exhausted the fraying remnants of her guiding, golden string.

 

The door to her bedroom slid away in a deafening crack as Rey spun to discover, in unbecoming disappointment, a personal droid rolling into the room, its wheels careening on the floor while a clump of metallic fabric flounced in its hands.

 

"Mistress Kenobi, I've been ordered to dress you for this evening's-"

 

"What is this?" Rey inquired suspiciously, seizing the clothing from the android and inspecting it sourly.

 

The robot did not reach for the fabrics. "I've been ordered to dress you f-"

 

"I didn't know the First Order programmed incoherent droids. Aren't you wired to say anything else?" Rey snapped, though her eyes remained cemented to the cloth in her hands.

 

If the droid responded, the Jedi did not recognize its words as she studied the unfurling material atop her fingertips. She allowed the silky sheet to slip between the crevices of her hands, and it morphed into the framework of a dress, sleek and refined. Its pleated skirt shone as armor, metallic in luster, while the bodice tightened elegantly like the chain of a breastplate. The dress gleamed in such iridescence that Rey could glimpse her own reflection in the dress's steel material, almost as if it were an iron mirror. At the collar of her armored gown, a cluster of sable pearls plunged across the scooped open back.

 

Rey could not deny the garment's beauty; however, she _would_  rebuke Snoke's command.

 

In the quiet, the droid repeated its mission, "I've been ordered to dress you for this eveni-"

 

"Your master selected this for me?" The Jedi nodded to her dress in a glower.

 

"Yes-"

 

"Ah, so, it does speak!" Rey folded the gown uncaringly as she eyed the robot with a hiss, "Well, you can tell your Supreme Leader that he can go shove this up his-"

 

"I chose that for you."

 

The Jedi pivoted on a whim.

 

Kylo Ren watched her quietly from the doorway. His eyes balanced between Rey and the dress, though he bore no frown of worry. It was as if the past week had been rudimentary to him, nonexistent. He gazed at her with the same casual adoration as before, "I thought it might suit you-"

 

"You don't know me very well, then," the Jedi rolled her eyes and tossed the garment onto her unmade bed, but her counterpart stepped forward in a blossom of resentment and humiliation.

 

"I know my own wife-"

 

"You don't _know_ me," Rey whipped her face venomously back to his, retracting again in abrupt anguish, " _I_ don't know me..."

 

As Kylo scraped up her gown against the friction of her velvet sheets, his voice resounded behind her with stubborn defiance, "That's ridiculous! I know you better than you know yourse-"

 

Jedi did not exploit their anger; however, Rey never did find rules quite appeasing.

 

"You think you know me?! You disappear for days without a word or trace, leaving me alone and terrified and waiting in my own pitiful isolation just to come back and say you _know_ me?! I don't know my own damn self, Ren! I don't know who I am- I don't know what I'm doing! I'm trapped in a world I don't belong in, but I don't know _where_ I belong! You don't know a fucking thing about me. Don't patronize me and pretend that you do."

 

Kylo Ren was inexorable, maneuvering with a velocity far more feral than in their training. His hands clasped Rey's wrists, and his face bent to meet her own.

 

"I know your mother was Lorna Kenobi. I know your father left before you were even born. I know your mother died, though she hadn't yet held you in her arms. I know my uncle loved her hopelessly, and I know he loved you, too. I know he left you on Jakku, but I know that didn't weaken you. I know you are a warrior. I know you're a Jedi. I know you were destined the world before you, and I know you resent me for robbing that of you. I know your power. You're Rey Kenobi the Jedi Knight, the bringer of light. You know who you are, and so do I. You're just too afraid to make it real."

 

Rey's hand clapped against his rigid jawbone before he could recoil, and Kylo tumbled sideways, narrowly catching himself on the edge of her vanity.

 

"Why didn't you tell me about them?!" Her eyes had pooled with searing tears.

 

The Knight analyzed her timidly, gruffly, _regretfully_ , his hand shielding his cheek while it surged with heat. "I thought you knew..."

 

Rey crumbled into the frigid wall behind herself, her head thumping against the metal with a single thrum as she muffled a defeated cry. The river of solitude which they both traveled in life flipped her wandering ship, and the Jedi felt herself drowning more so than beneath the waterfall. She failed to remember, however, her counterpart had mastered the isolated tide.

 

Kylo Ren pushed himself off of the vanity and treaded the muggy river's banks, approaching Rey somberly. A course finger drifted beneath her eyes and brushed aside her sizzling tears as Ren's face flickered in the amber glow beneath her window shades.

 

"I am not the only one who must let go, Rey."

 

The Jedi crumbled into a pitiful sigh while Ren traced the underside of her chin protectively.

 

She flooded with the desire to feel his arms around her again, her allying shield. She wanted him to whisper to her once more that he believed everything he had spoken, that she was a Jedi, that she was _powerful_. She longed to shatter the fortress he constructed in his mind, to confide in his vulnerabilities as he had in hers. She craved the sticky sweet substinence that covered his lips and his unsettling, gentle touch.

 

Rey watched his eyes glimmer patiently, unwilling to press her further without permission.

 

She withdrew. "I need to get dressed..."

 

The Jedi swiveled out of his grasp and retrieved her gown from atop the vanity, but Kylo inquired, gesturing to her droid's unnoticed absence, "Will you need assistance-"

 

"I'm not a _youngling_ , Kylo Ren," she faced away from him, tugging at the hem of her tunic, "I can dress  _myself_."

 

The man exhaled another of his peculiar, hoarse chuckles, studying her absentmindedly until she caught his eye, "Turn around!"

 

His hands raised in surrender as he pivoted the opposite direction, left to listen as the mounds of fabric slid off of the woman behind him.

 

In a grunt, she asked, fiddling with a zipper, "What exactly am I being dragged to this time? Another conclave meeting?"

 

"Snoke preferred you not return with us again," Kylo Ren sniggered, "I meant to discuss this with you. Tonight, the First Order is holding a gala-"

 

"A _ball_? Isn't that a little lighthearted for their taste?"

 

"It _is_ a celebration," his eyes plunged to the floor as a jeweled piece of her clothing hit the ground with a thunk.

 

"A celebration of what?" Rey's grip engulfed his arm, and Kylo turned to find the intricate strands of black pearls draping over her open back twisted in ebony clumps as she pointed to her shoulders, "Could you fix the jewelry?"

 

Ren's fingers stroked her unclothed spine, toying meticulously with the pearls so that they slithered again into the garment's design. He pulled tenderly at the skirt of her dress and situated it properly above her hips as he breathed into her ear, "A celebration of our wedding."

 

The Jedi grew rigid beneath his grip, and, sensing this, he retracted.

 

Rey searched for his gaze and turned back to him, but she could not press the secrets on her lips against his. "Could you send for my droid?"

 

Kylo Ren's chin bobbed warily, an aura of disappointment radiating from his figure, but he stepped toward the door, fit to serve his ally nonetheless.

 

"I'll find you when you're done."

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo Ren reminisced in the thoughts of his oasis, curious as to why the Jedi always left him with a peculiar thirst.

 

She was sublime, not a flaw scathing her beauty; she _parched_ him.

 

Her droid had ironed her chocolate tangles of hair into lazy swirls which drifted across her bare shoulders, save for the stream of black pearls engulfing her neck and cascading down the arch of her spine. The armor-like dress flattered her, for her beauty laid in her resolve.

 

She was a Jedi. A warrior. A queen.

 

Kylo Ren studied the way their steps fell into a unified rhythm, grinning softly at her hands positioned atop his arm as he accompanied her from their transport ship to the First Order's grand ballroom. Of course an event of such grandeur could not be held on Karriscus, their humble base; the politicians of the First Order flourished in the gluttony of opulence and required their celebration occur on the capital planet, numerous parsecs away.

 

Ren scrutinized the unearthly skyscrapers towering over he and the Jedi, pondering over his various excursions to the awfully similar Coruscant with his parents in his younger years. It seemed politicians remained the same in choice of habitat no matter their moral differences.

 

Kylo Ren's thoughts were broken as his eyes returned to the approaching grand hall, a palace in comparison of the cosmopolitan high-rises.

 

The Supreme Leader did cherish luxury.

 

The Knight opened his mouth and flipped his stare to Rey, but his eyes softened as she halted abruptly, her face hollow and bleak.

 

"Is there something wrong?" Ren whispered tenderly, aware of the many politicians floundering toward the building around them.

 

The Jedi trembled slightly. "What... what am I supposed to say to these people? What am I supposed to do-"

 

" _I_ will speak for you," he nodded and steadied his body against her hands, "Their celebration may be for you and I, but they pride themselves in their vanity. They won't care to ask about you."

 

Rey shivered, the open back of her dress catching the billowing wind, but her fingers fastened in confidence around her husband's arm.

 

Their footsteps elicited an imperturbable tempo as they strode together toward their unspoken battle. The Jedi, however, could not dismiss the quivering of her figure.

 

"You're shutting me out," Ren commented, his eyes set forward in the silence of their bond.

 

The buzz of people around them amplified as the pair reached the grand hall's golden doors, meters high and decorated with gems the scavenger had never known existed; she couldn't help but wonder what else lay in store if this was only the entrance.

 

Kylo Ren lugged her gently past the doorway and into the ballroom itself while the Jedi voided of breath.

 

If she had found the planet in its shimmering glory beautiful, then the grand hall matched no words. Its ceiling soared into archs of cement, light, and silver ribbons, monstrous chandeliers of diamond looming just below while the curved roof led to paneled walls of gold and jewels. Swarms of unfamiliar politicians dressed in colorless robes plagued the hall, enveloping the colossal room in a chorus of cries and laughs. A throne of glass and iron stood against the hall's center wall- _the Supreme Leader's._

 

The creature himself studied the festivities from his divine seat.

 

Rey shuddered as his gaze scoured the crowd to find the pair.

 

"Talk to me."

 

The Knight peered at his wife as they passed a group of debating strangers, "What?"

 

"Distract me," she leaned into Ren unconsciously, a torrent of panic raging inside her, "I need... I don't want to focus on this place."

 

Kylo Ren felt his chin brush against the top of her head. "What did you want me to talk about-"

 

"I don't know!" Rey exclaimed, whispering in anxious fright as she scanned the daunting crowd around them, meeting several poisonous gazes, "Just... tell me or a story or something!"

 

"Whatever happened to not being a youngling, Rey-"

 

"Please, Ren..." Her timid voice provoked an unwelcome pity from him.

 

Kylo fished a collected breath as his arm slid across the fold of her back and enticed her closer to his chest. 

 

"Once, there was a god. He was a wicked king, the reaper of the dead, and he was alone- his company was found only in his lifeless subjects."

 

The Jedi grew wobbly in her steps as Ren carried her through the horde of beasts around them. They seemed hardly human, veiled by plastic skin and gaudy silks. Their eyes glinted with a primitive hunger as the pair glided past their formidable congregation. It was as if power had replaced their souls, gold pouring from their mouths, and Rey shivered at the almost undead politicians swarming them.

 

"His heart was filled with malice and resentment, for he bore no more humanity than his realm of the departed. But, there was a maiden, fair and beautiful and full of the one thing his frigid heart could not carry- _life_. She was his light."

 

The Knight dipped his head in greeting of the conclave members as the two neared Snoke and his iron throne. Rey's porcelain face lifted to her husband beside her, the ghostly light of the hall staining her skin while his mouth drifted to the pendulum of pearls swinging below her ears.

 

"And, in his cold despair, he forced her by his side because he did not know how to earn her love. The woman was miserable, unable to scour light in her prison while the world crumbled into winter in her absence."

 

The Jedi trembled at the touch of his lips against her cheek, breathing his heavy words against her skin.

 

"But, she was _mighty_. She was a queen. And with her king beside her, she embraced the life, the innocence stolen from her and the future bestowed by her king. He _loved_ her, and though she could not forgive what he had done, she found and magnified the light still smothering his callous heart."

 

The fabric of Rey's dress skated the quartz floor beneath them while the man at her side guided her in a bow. Snoke's throne awaited before them, and the Jedi's gaze trickled upward to glimpse the monster's satisfied scowl. Kylo Ren shepherded her to her feet once more after the Supreme Leader tilted his gnarled chin in a nod.

 

The Jedi sank into the blur of their bond, her mind fluttering giddily with the thoughts of Ren's fable. Kylo sensed the smile dribbling across her face, and he ushered her tenderly with his burly grasp toward the mass of alien people.

 

In the wake of his story, the Jedi had failed to detect the guests dispersing themselves among the grand ballroom. It was as if they'd fled the hall's center, crowding themselves out of reach of the room's center like an unknown enemy had frightened them away while Rey glimpsed the flowing silhouettes of two bronzed figures.

 

They'd begun to dance.

 

Rey discovered herself so encapsulated by the intricate web of people, weaving between each other in a dangerous display that she did not register her husband's coarse hands, prompting her toward the commotion. As she followed placidly, her dress fanning into an illustrious shimmer behind her, Rey's eyes widened in alarm of their celebration.

 

"Ren, what are you-"

 

"Dance with me," he pleaded with a subtle smile, positioning his hand atop her waist and the other folded between her finger tips.

 

Rey shook her head, glancing to the flock of whirling robes and people around them, "I don't- I don't know how-"

 

"Think of our training," he whispered as their bodies shifted in a lazy rhythm, "Hush your thoughts and listen to me. Your mind will do the rest."

 

Reluctantly, the Jedi eased into his chest, her vision obscured by the crowd of people around them, yet Kylo Ren remained the only star reflected in her eyes. He glided across the ivory floor confidently, dominantly, and Rey felt her feet synchronize with the movement of his own. She floated in his arms, secured by his protective grip around her as they soared through the maelstrom of the ball. His face fell to her own, stroking aside her hair and pressing lightly his lips to hers.

 

Rey melted into the violet rays of the night, enveloping the sun gently as the man swayed with twilight's lyrical chime. Her head fell against his chest, and Rey savored the boom of the night's ebony heart against her ear. He held her softly, shielding her in his own way from the incinerating gazes of the First Order around them.

 

"What's your secret, Ren?" the Jedi murmured with eyes sewn shut, "How on Alderaan did you learn to dance so well?"

 

Kylo Ren fell forward, dipping the woman in his hands, feeling her dress slide across his fingers, brushing his mop of hair beside her cheek.

 

"My mother taught me."

 

As he lifted the Jedi to her feet once more, Rey marveled at the man steadying her in his wooden arms before she licked her lips and begged into his ear. "Teach me."

 

The spectral flickers of light skipped across the confused man's face while Rey sighed with furrowed brows.

 

"Teach me more. Take me away from here, Ren, and teach me... tell me more stories, your stories, _our_ stories, and teach me..."

 

Her fingers slipped into his hands as the Knight swept into the shadows of the crowd, grinning to her behind him.

 

"I never liked these parties anyway."

 

* * *

 

An eruption of light cascaded across the twilight abyss.

 

Rey flinched and clenched the hand of her husband beside her as the light rippled across the glassy pool before them.

 

"Fireworks," Kylo Ren glanced toward the frightened Jedi, "They're used in celebrations."

 

In vulnerable hesitation, Rey lifted her stare to glimpse another cataclysmic explosion engulfing the night sky. She exhaled a shallow breath, but her eyes studied the collapsing sparks glimmer in the water's ebony reflection below them.

 

Their room, temporary for the journey's duration, mimicked the hall in magnificence. Filled with furniture beyond imagination's finest luxury, the pair discovered the walls caked with gems and windows which caved to reveal a balcony. Rey had ventured past the silk curtains waving in the breeze and onto the balcony to find the ground sinking into a pool of water, its furthest wall composed of translucent metal so that they might glimpse the glinting skyline even beneath the surface.

 

The two stood together, then, holding one another and witnessing the light as it showered and bloomed amongst the darkness.

 

Kylo Ren stepped forward, his feet sloshing as his trousers dipped into the water. He spun to Rey and guided her hands toward the pool. Her bare feet slithered against the surface, and the light painting the pool's edge morphed into complex, rolling hills with the waves sprouting from her touch.

 

Water, however, smothered the sun's scorching rays.

 

"My clothes," Rey shook her head as Kylo, knee-deep and saturated, urged her forward into the silent lagoon.

 

His hands abandoned her own while he descended deeper toward the teeny ocean's wake.

 

"Take them off."

 

The once extinguished flame flared in Rey's cheeks, and her face drooped modestly.

 

 _There is nothing you must prove,_  She murmured to herself.

 

Kylo Ren's eyes conveyed an adoration inexplicable as his arms splashed the water beside himself and rose to the collar of Rey's gown. His drenched chest, covered still by his dress shirt, rubbed against Rey while he reached behind her neck and unclasped the band of pearls, listening as they sank into the pool. Her top buckled with the release of his pressure against her, and Kylo Ren shut his eyes to press his salivating mouth against her naked chest.

 

"Extraordinary."

 

He marveled between kisses as Rey's hands stitched together the stringy locks of his hair. A curdled groan reverberated in her throat, and the Knight's hands traced her belly to reach the lingering skirt of her dress.

 

In one swift wrinkle of continuity, Kylo Ren tore the metal fabric off of her hips and pressed his waist against her own, grunting as her figure slid into the pool's wall. Water splattered against the soft skin of Rey's breasts, and Kylo's lips, dripping from the gust of the waves, slid up and across her collarbone in a wet trail of heat as she shivered with a keening moan.

 

_She was an oasis._

 

Kylo Ren's hands submerged beneath the surface to untie the fastens of his trousers.

 

_He was the star._

 

Rey spasmed with the trace of his fingers, lingering between her thighs.

 

_She was not simply the sun. She was the day, the mother of light._

 

Their souls contracted as Ren pushed himself inside her, quivering as he convulsed atop her with the thrum of their bleeding hearts.

 

_And, he was the night. Tied for an eternity, yet never destined to meet._

 

The sun gasped as the flames of her star lapped against her skin, bursting inside her to birth the blaze of something new.

 

_Have you ever heard such a tale?_

 

Rey came into him, wrenching against his tender, silent figure, and darkness melted against the threshold of the world's yearning light.

 

_When the day loved the night..._

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO YOU GUYS AND APOLOGIES.
> 
> I am SO SO SO SORRY FOR DISAPPEARING.
> 
> I've been going on lots of short trips for college and vacation recently, and I just didn't have time to write. This chapter took a lot out of me as well, so it ended up taking an eternity to finish. BUT IT'S DONE FINALLY! I'm not sure how well it will be taken just because it's artistic smut rather than just getting it over and done with, but I think that also provides more symbolism for the story. It's not traditional, more eclectic at that. Still, I feel that deepens the struggle and magnitude of what they've done. Please let me know what you guys think!
> 
> As is with my previous trends, I'd like to dedicate this chapter to the lovely @underrated-reylo on tumblr! The aesthetic she made for this work is just gORGEOUS (I'll find a way to attach it somehow), and not to mention she's just been the kindest person putting up with me, too. Thank you for that!
> 
> Anyway, I truly wish this chapter compensated for my absence. You guys are so wonderful, and I hope to be publishing much more consistently the rest of this week.
> 
> Have a blessed day and happy reading!


	10. As Long As the Stars Shine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You fell in love so easily  
> With everything around you,  
> But couldn't seem to  
> Fall in love with anything inside you.  
> And you wonder why  
> You're so alone."
> 
> Sana Abuleil
> 
>  
> 
> (In which the world crumbles slowly...)

Kylo Ren marveled at the moonlight.

 

It stained her bare skin, claiming her to the night, though her head of fire feathered still beneath the twilight's wavy glow.

 

The man shifted softly beneath the covers of their bed and pressed a hand against the mattress on her other side. His eyes caught sight of the billowing curtains, fanning the entrance to the balcony, and a smirk bloomed at the tip of his cheeks in thought of the woman he held out there, beneath the pool's gentle tide only hours before.

 

She snored gently beside him, something which pulvirized his gut with a funny warmth, that someone so small could rest so loudly.

 

He watched the arc of her back, expanding and releasing with the weight of her breath, the way her faintly lit muscles tensed ever so slightly against the coolness of his lips, the subtle, periodic stirring of her figure as if it were speaking, "Don't leave me- I am still with you."

 

Kylo Ren brushed her chestnut curls of hair to the side of her naked back, arching himself so that he might lean atop her but not disturb her quiet slumber. He cemented his hands on either side of her glinting shoulders and painted the tender divot of her spine with his mouth.

 

"I love you." The night's splendor unsheathed his secrets as the day, drenched in the burning light of the stars, remained tucked away in sleep's solicitous pocket.

 

Kylo lifted a hesitant hand to dust aside the locks of hair smothering Rey's ears.

 

The night surrendered against the blinding beauty of the day, how she shone just as brightly bare and clothed by nothing but moonlight. He descended upon the world in kisses, enveloping the scorching sun in an unfaltering shield of his gentle darkness. "I love you."

 

Cocooned in the swirling storm of sunset, Rey melted in unconsciousness against his touch, her light extinguished only to flare amidst the match that he was and blaze into something greater.

 

"As long as the stars shine, I will love you," Kylo Ren lapped his stream of words against her paled, barren skin, "As long as the moon beams."

 

She would always be the sun, destined to burn an eternity after their mortal lives collapsed into dust.

 

"Until I die, until the sun no longer smolders against the twilight's ebony tide," the man felt himself promise against the supple, sweet taste of her body against his lips, "You are mine."

 

* * *

 

 

Rey flinched at a thunderous eruption, peeling open her exhausted eyes in time to glimpse a blurry vision of falling sparks in the sky outside their bedroom window.

 

 _Fireworks_. Her husband's words rang in her mind as she lifted a tingly hand and rubbed the weary wrinkles of her face. 

 

The Jedi reached instinctively beside herself in desire for the touch of Kylo Ren, but she toppled onto her side, lifting her gaze in discovery of an empty bed beside herself. A crater lingered where her husband had lain, but his apparition had long faded into the ghostly thrum of darkness.

 

Another gargantuan screeching of a blast above wrenched Rey's face toward the opened balcony doors, the curtains shuffling quietly against them in the wind.

 

Perhaps, Kylo had vanished to watch the cataclysmic display himself. He did rather admire the fireworks, after all.

 

Squeezing her shoulders together in a yawn, the soles of her feet shivered in contact with the floor beneath them as she rubbed the small bumps festering on her arms. The ribbons of wind fluttering from the opened doorways tickled her naked figure, and she extended an arm toward a nearby chair, retrieving a silk nightgown she'd placed atop the seat in past intent of wearing it that evening.

 

She smirked, and her eyes wandered to their rustled bedsheets, filthy with their love.

 

_So much for that plan._

 

Her hair, damp still from the pool, collected at the sides of her face in wispy trickles while she slipped the sable gown over her shoulders. She urged her legs forward gradually, feeling herself move with a stiffness unlike any ache of training before; she surprised herself with how she craved the way it burned.

 

The frigid skin of her feet collided with the balcony's cement floor as she stepped past the swelling fabric of the room's linen curtains. Her eyes fell to the sky, though she could not scour the burning blur of the stars amidst twilight's abyss.

 

The fireworks ceased- she noted alongside Ben's absence.

 

Rey studied the moon's glowing reflection atop the serene pool's waves, but the mirrored painting of the sky darkened and faded as a shape obscured the sky alongside the roar of jets and an unleashing of torpedos.

 

The Jedi lifted her troubled face to the horizon.

 

_An X-Wing._

 

Those had not been fireworks.

 

Her eyes widened in a horrific realization as she stumbled backward with a tidal wave of nausea flooding her stomach.

 

Her eyes twitched in panic, glancing around the void of sky until the thrum of more hovering machines validated her fright.

 

_It was a fleet._

 

Rey choked on the shockwave of terror and wrath blistering through the callouses of her heart.

 

The Resistance was _alive_.

 

Her shattered gasp bled into a cry, and the Jedi staggered forward, catching herself against the exterior wall as she sensed drops of her fury slipping down her lifeless face.

 

He _lied_ to her.

 

They all had.

 

Rey wailed, jerking herself forward and swinging an opened palm in her rage as the room's furniture toppled with the blast of the force. 

 

 _As long as the stars shine._ A forgotten memory breathed against her mind.

 

The Jedi buckled beneath her sobs, her shoulders caving into her anguish as she clasped them gently beneath the barren sky, voided of light.

 

Tie Fighters soon joined the battle cries of the Resistance fighters, singing alongside the merciless chorus of war.

 

So encapsulated by her grief, Rey had not registered the resurrection of her friends, her allies still alive and well.

 

Her redenned eyes opened slowly.

 

_They could save her._

 

Rey catapulted her wobbly legs forward, stifling with her labored breaths, but her quivering hands fastened against the bedroom door nonetheless. She slammed it aside and marched down the empty corridor, wheezing in fits of fervent fury.

 

The Jedi could feel the force beat soundly, whirring with the sudden pulse of life in the Resistance, though it crackled and careened with the splintering of her heart. She felt its wrinkles as the crimson string tying her heart to Kylo Ren's quavered alongside its fraying strands.

 

_She would destroy him and every lie he'd spun to weave the snare she found herself grieving within._

 

Her feet stumbled unconsciously down the labyrinth of corridors engulfing the gala hall; she could hardly hear the sound of pinging blasters amidst the torrent of her bleating bond.

 

She was filled to the brim with Kylo Ren, the ache she felt no longer satisfying as she reeled past hall after hall, glimpsing legions of stormtroopers on their voyage to destroy her only silver lining.

 

She would beat them to it.

 

Rey skidded down the hall's alabaster staircase, trotting to the ballroom's foyer as the wind, whipping against the friction of ships screeching overhead, flared against her skin, and the building opened to the battle outside.

 

Her bare feet stung with the contact of rubble beneath them, and Rey paused, heaving in choked, bitter breaths to scan her surroundings.

 

She could recall only sourly the memories of the final battle of the Resistance, or what she thought had been as a war mimicking just the same echoed around her. 

 

Trailing X-Wings stormed the horizon while soldiers of both sides swarmed the planet's fuming floor.

 

Rey swallowed dryly and turned her chin up to the skies above.

 

"Help!" her ragged voice coughed among the plumes of ashes and smoke, though her words could not rise above the maelstrom that was the battle.

 

Not a single soul faltered in the force's vast reach.

 

The Jedi begged into the mysterious power, clawing at the force for a single shrivel of hope,  _Save me! Somebody, save me!_

 

A tortured croak escaped her as she sank forward, her eyes betraying her resolve as she screamed. Her voice was met by the melody of others, and Rey tilted her clattering chin up to spy a silhouette dancing through a fleet of rebel soldiers, a string of bloody light slashing through each of the figure's adversaries.

 

Rey's heart contorted violently.

 

_Kylo Ren._

 

She heaved her rickety feet off the ground and touted her chest as if to challenge and mock him because she knew now what he was.

 

The final soldier opposing him fell, and Kylo Ren's gaze flickered upward to cross hers.

 

He stiffened.

 

 _As long as the moon beams_. 

 

Rey analyzed him, the blood on his hands, the embers glowering in his cheeks, and her heart crumpled into a thousand different shards of hate and poison. In his eyes, she could glimpse only the darkened sky; no moon gleamed in their wake.

 

"Rey..."

 

His lips trembled softly, his words almost unheard.

 

The Jedi before him, however, held no place in her heart for the venom of his lies any longer, and she stepped away with a lingering potency that splintered his expectant scowl. "I thought I loved you."

 

"Rey!"

 

A different shout distracted Rey from the man before her, unable to glimpse the way Kylo's face crumbled under her words as she rose her stare and discovered Finn, with outstretched hands, manning his own freighter jet.

 

 _He'd_ heard her cry.

 

Rey did not hesitate, nor did she steal a glance back.

 

She ignored the scathing shouts from the monster trailing at her heels and the way his plea tore at the fabric of her heart.

 

Instead, her hand clutched onto Finn's, the exhaust of his ship tossing her hair behind her as he hoisted her onboard with a disgruntled yelp.

 

"Finn!" His co-pilot, a lady unfamiliar to Rey, spun to the pair, "The General said she was a traitor to the Resistance! We can't bring her ba-"

 

"We're going to have to make do, Rose," he spat quickly, _nervously_ , and rammed the port door shut.

 

Countless questions blurred Rey's mind as she staggered to her seat, but none could subdue the throb inside of her as the tether of her bond fractured below Ren's searing betrayal.

 

_Until the sun no longer smolders against the twilight's ebony tide._

 

The Jedi huffed despairingly, her glinting eyes traveling to the freighter's musty windows. Outside, the sky was painted with the tokens of war, streaked with the ashy skeletons of ship contrail and smeared with the color of haunting crimson. The sun did not burn but _bled_ across the horizon as if the night had stolen from it day's beauty.

 

_You can't leave me! You're mine! I am yours!_

 

The voice of Rey's enemy screeched as the folds of their bond collapsed into nothing.

 

 _I am not yours_.

 

She raised her eyes to watch the sky blaze before her, numb to the cascade of tears smothering her face.

 

_I am no one._

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO YOU GUYS!
> 
> Once again, my earnest apologies on this delay. Life has not been kind recently.
> 
> HOWEVER, please please let me know what you guys thought of this chapter! (And my apologies for the betrayal too)
> 
> But, I've been waiting for your reactions on this one for a while. ;)
> 
> I'd like to thank all of you who keep reading this story! You are the reason I keep going, and this chapter is dedicated to all of you!! I can't express my gratitude!
> 
> I've received some questions about this recently, and I want to clarify that this work is aBSOLUTELY open to submission of art, mood boards, aesthetics, playlist, remixes- you name it! Just contact me on tumblr @nottheyounglings and I'd be happy to talk to you!  
> {And you can see some of the amazing mood boards people like @underrated-reylo have already made for this work!}
> 
> Anyway, thank you again for sticking with this work! I look forward to updating soon. :) Happy reading and have a blessed day!
> 
>  


	11. The Lie of Satisfaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth.  
> And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm:  
> by lying, or by being lied to."
> 
> -Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“ _How long_.”

 

Rey’s battered fingers clutched the edge of her seat as she inquired in a whisper. Emotion, disorientation, and utter exhausted discolored her face.

 

“How long has it been?”

 

“Six months.”

 

Luke Skywalker rumbled quietly. There was an undeniable disappointment present in his answer.

 

Rey raised her reddenned eyes to the man who had once been her master, and her voice splintered beneath her realization, “That’s... _impossible_...”

 

“You’ve been conspiring _with_ _The First Order_ for six months,” Admiral Fray hissed beside the ancient Jedi Master, though General Organa raised a cautious hand to his shoulder. He composed himself at her subtle warning and tugged at his shirt collar, “The only thing that’s truly impossible is that you claim you were unaware the Resistance survived the attack on Karriscus, considering you were _present_ during the ambush. Master Skywalker even witnessed your surrender to Supreme Leader Snoke!”

 

Rey readjusted her gaze in the hazy interrogation room lighting before she swallowed dryly, “That’s not... that’s not what happened. I don’t _remember_ that!”

 

“There seem to be plenty of soldiers who recall otherwise,” Fray snapped before Leia, at his side, cleared her throat in the room’s tense air.

 

“ _Rey_. We have a plethora of footage that The First Order used to taunt us. Footage of you,” the General’s gaze softened, “Among their ranks. You were _one of them-”_

 

”This is all _wrong_.” The lost woman mumbled hopelessly. She offered Leia only a pitiful yearning in her eyes as her chest swelled and sank like the unsteady tide of her emotions. “I saw you... I _saw_ you _die_.”

 

Admiral Fray released a snort.

 

“If it isn’t obvious to you yet, we’re quite _alive_ and well-”

 

“Admiral.”

 

Luke Skywalker’s interruption alone would have done well enough to silence Fray, but the scathing scowl which masked his face ensured not another word lest he conclude.

 

He had changed since Rey last saw him, she noticed. 

 

Her Master was skinnier, scrawnier perhaps. _Scarier_. His unfeeling disposition frightened her.

 

Ben Solo betrayed his uncle years ago, and the imprint of his shortcomings as a mentor scarred Luke far deeper than his flesh. But, to watch his last hope, his second chance, the daughter of the woman he loved, _Rey Kenobi_ fall from the stars in such cruel and conscious surrender...

 

Luke’s heart had fractured into irreparable pieces, webbing a mirror of his own failure.

 

“What you claim to have seen,” his defeated stare remained on the fallen Jedi, “It’s simply not possible.”

 

“Snoke pierced your heart with his lightsaber in front me,” Rey could not prevent the overflowing of her eyes, “He _killed_ you. He killed you, and he made me watch. I had no choice! There was no hope for me! I died that day, on the battlefield, right next to you!”

 

“You clearly managed well enough with the enemy on your own,” Fray inspected Rey’s condition, noting the torn but still gaudy robe adorning her figure. The Resistance had yet to offer her supplemental clothing; they’d decided to interrogate her first, instead.

 

As Rey uncomfortably hid herself in the revealing garment, Fray folded his arms and glanced at the General, “Oh, but I’m sure she’ll tell us she just ‘stumbled’ upon that in the Supreme Leader’s closet-”

 

”That’s enough, Fray,” General Organa rubbed her temples before she flicked a tired hand toward him, “You’ve been dismissed.”

 

The Admiral, hindered by his damaged pride, pushed his chair gruffly against the table as his clattering footsteps trailed out of the room.

 

An unspoken relief swept the space, and Leia heaved her attention back to their much quieter trio.

 

“We have no reason to believe you, Rey.” She spoke confidently, coldly, but the way her face crumpled unveiled the antithetical thoughts tempting her.

 

The young Jedi’s heart refused to beat as she stammered. “P-Please! There has to be something! I have no weapon! I just wanted to escape him, I-I wanted to be free!”

 

“Why now? Why not four, five months before today?!” General Leia’s tongue felt poisoned with the furious words she did not wish to say. “Why didn’t you try to run away!”

 

“I-I did! I tried...! I...”

 

Rey coughed on a hoarse sob. Her  cheeks stung with every teeny convulsion in her chest, and her stomach ached with sorrow and soreness. A fire sparked in her heart, remembering the cause of her pain, both physically and in her fractured soul.

 

“ _He_ kept me there... h-he wanted to _use_ me...”

 

Luke noted the way Rey sorely shifted in her seat, and his voice resounded less scornfully than before. “Snoke?”

 

“ _No_.” Rey spat, seething with venom that rivaled a viper.

 

” _Kylo Ren_.”

  

* * *

 

The freighter screeched while its belly met the ground with cataclysmic friction. 

 

Even so, the man’s focus remained unaffected.

 

As stormtroopers swarmed the war torn plaza from the mouth of the ship, carrying with them a chorus of orders and marching footsteps, Kylo Ren did not flinch. He hardly shifted his gaze. Not even the freighter’s exhaust which rippled through his unruly hair could shake his stance.

 

His boots were planted in the shrapnel dusted dirt of the plaza, and his eyes had fallen to the bloodied ground.

 

Glinting feebly just below the powdered, rubble surface- a _pearl_.

 

Ren resisted the dull ache in his chest where there once was a string. An intricate thread that weaved a tapestry of destiny, of love, of something more. His heart throbbed in the oblivion of this severed string.

 

He knelt, feeling his knees slide against the sodden soil. The jewel of sorts was cool against his fingers. Smooth and unscathed. A stark contrast to the imploded grand hall still smoldering behind him.

 

The scars on his face contorted as he examined the untainted pearl. Its ebony shell taunted him with a truth that ignited his extinguished fury.

 

This gem was _hers_.

 

“Master Ren.” A muffled voice materialized in Kylo’s thoughtful silence, and he lifted a grief-masked face to the stormtrooper before him.

 

His eyes, stained by a brush of crimson, wavered impatiently. “What is it?”

 

“The Supreme Leader has requested an audience with you.” 

 

Kylo Ren turned the pearl over in his hand, unsettled by the touch of anxiety any command from Snoke bore.

 

There was no satisfaction in knowing he had _failed_ his master.

 

There appeared to be far less in knowing he had failed _himself_.

 

As his limp muscles heaved his figure from the charred and wounded ground- a reflection of the devastation beneath the bitter  facade of his rage- he clenched the pearl between his fingers and slipped the jewel beneath his sable coat.

 

The weight of the hidden gem did not physically hinder his stride but rather stunned the way in which his heart pounded.

 

 _Rey_.

 

He called, despite the fractured bond between them.

 

 _I will find you_.

  

* * *

 

 

She washed away the grime, the sticky substances of battle and of the First Order that had clung to her, tainted her.

 

The refresher cleansed her of the dirt caking her skin, but it could not so easily rub the bruises, humiliation, guilt, and _pain_ from her body.

 

A droid had chaperoned Rey from the dimly lit interrogation room to a facility in the medical wing where she might shower and finally rid herself of the frail nightgown atop her figure. As soon as the refresher ceased to spew steam from its spout, the droid once again assisted Rey, perhaps _evaluated_ her while she slipped the Resistance’s beige, supplemental clothing over her wet skin.

 

“You really aren’t so different from the First Order, here,” she’d goaded, buttoning her tunic and eyeing the droid whose gaze ceased to falter, “You both just love to stare.”

 

The android had ignored her and, instead, placed cruelly familiar chains on her wrists. The wheels on its lower frame squeaked as it led its compliant prisoner down a bleak and rotting hallway.

 

Rey’s heart plummeted with the thought of _missing_ the First Order’s cleanliness.

 

“Master Skywalker will be waiting for you inside.”

 

The woman nearly jumped as the droid spoke for the first time, jerking to a halt in front of what appeared to be the entrance to a control room.

 

She hesitantly lifted her face to the doorway, rattled by the déjà vu of another time, another place. Another interrogation. The memories of Snoke’s chamber encapsulated the bleak corridor, and Rey quivered as she stepped inside the abyss of a room.

 

The surge of light caused the Jedi to blink as her eyes adjusted to the blinding room.

 

Each panel of the wall seemed to be glowing, radiating some sort of light as the ground pulsed with electricity as well. A single chair had been planted in the room’s center, bolted to the almost glass-like flooring. Only on one side of the room was there a break in the continuity of light; the wall had been, instead, replaced by a sort of mirror.

 

 _One-way glass_ , Rey noted.

 

She’d attained an _audience_.

 

As the Jedi blinked again in the vibrant space, unable to rub her eyes with chained hands, she spotted a figure looming behind the center chair.

 

Luke Skywalker studied her, apparently accustomed to the almost divine light, for he gestured to the seat before him with hesitation, donning robes of contrasting charcoal, “Sit.”

 

Rey pivoted around the room, assuring he was in fact the only company she would have before she drug her feet over to the titanium chair. She seated herself cautiously, wary as to not lose sight of her previous master.

 

Luke appeared to share a similar distrust.

 

He analyzed her, the way she sat, the way she breathed, the way her eyes flickered away from his as he stepped in front of her.

 

“Rey Kenobi,” he thundered quietly in the intimate space, “You have been accused of treason, treachery, conspiracy with the enemies of the Resistance. Evidence condemns you to these accusations.”

 

His fallen Padawan shifted, the pretense of her confidence slowly crumbling beneath a great sadness boiling inside her.

 

Luke shuts his eyes softly. “And, yet, you show no intention of deceiving the Resistance.”

 

Rey gasped audibly and sank into her chair with a wave of temporary relief. 

 

_He believed her._

 

As she straightened herself again, her heart still fluttering with hope, Luke’s hand unfurled toward her own, “Rey... what lengths would you take to prove to us that what you say is true?”

 

Her chest pounded with the thrum of her heart, and her eyes welled as she found, once more, the gentleness of her former master in the face of the man before her.

 

”Anything. I would do _anything_ to show you.”

 

She gripped his hand in reassurance, and Luke inhaled a lengthy breath before he pressed his opposite palm to her forehead as the floor fell away.

 

_“You were my brother Anakin!” A bearded man, a stranger yet as familiar as Luke shouted while the floor filled with molten lava._

_Luke stood still with Rey, their hands interlocked and his palm against her head as the room morphed into the inferno of Mustafar, the paneled walls **becoming** the visions they were witnessing._

_Another man croaked and groaned, heaving his charred body against the gravel floor._

_”I loved you!” The first man mourned just as the room transformed with a fiery blast erupting in the sky._

_Rey’s eyes flew upward to find Resistance fighters swarming overhead in the pitch black clouds, smothered by smoke and flames until another voice resonated in the changing space._

_”I thought I loved you.”_

_Rey opened her eyes to glimpse herself, standing across a crumbling battlefield, and Kylo Ren watched numbly as she ran in fear from his unsheathed, ruby blade._

_“Little Jedi, do you know why I spared you?”_

_The woman spun her head around in dread, discovering her fear founded in the presence of Supreme Leader Snoke’s colossal hologram towering over the dwarfed bodies of two other figures._

_Rey could feel Luke shift uncomfortably against her mind. That was all he needed to see._

_Instead, the scene altered again, something far darker manifesting as once more the cries of war engulfed the pair._

_Rey recognized this battlefield._

_She shuddered in a heartbroken breath as her eyes adjusted to spy Snoke once more, Luke’s emerald lightsaber intertwined with his bloody blade as the young woman felt herself scream._

_”Master!”_

_“Run!” Luke turned his face in a warning, but Snoke seized this distraction and plunged his saber through the center of the ancient Jedi’s chest._

_The room morphed once more. As Luke’s body collapsed to the ground, a waterfall blossomed below him, and Rey watched as the plummeting figure became her own. She hit the water, sinking slowly as only her thoughts were heard in the silent space._

_“I’m here! Save me, I’m here!”_

_Kylo Ren’s hand submerged beneath the water and latched onto her own as he lifted her body and cradled her sopping figure against his chest._

_”I’ve found you.”_

_Her eyes fluttered open slowly. The water moved at a placid pace while the feral waterfall dissolved into a marble pool. Ren pressed her against the glass aquarium wall, and her unclothed figure sloshed in the water beneath his breathy kisses._

_”I love you,” his voice was hoarse as his forehead, beaded with water droplets, landed against her own. She convulsed with the rhythm of his hips against hers and quivered in a moan._

_“You have created nothing but failure!” The room eroded once more to reveal the same man, though still bare from his torso up, knelt before Snoke’s throne, the same as before._

_This time, however, Kylo Ren’s back was bloodied by ribbons of lacerations as Snoke stalked the area around him like a starving predator, holding an electric coil in his hands._

_”You are infatuated with her,” he hounded the Knight, “You fucked her, and you think that is satisfaction.”_

_Kylo Ren toppled beneath the weight of himself and coughed on a sickly groan._

_”Satisfaction is lie! My apprentice, what a fool you are, for you believe it.”_

_The weapon in Snoke’s hand crackled as he raised it toward the young man and whipped the opened flaps of his skin. The man shrieked with the snap of the weapon, but Rey released herself from Luke’s grasp, springing forward in a moment of disparity as she called._

_”Ren!”_

_Almost as if he’d heard her, Kylo Ren’s reddened eyes lifted to meet her own, and he breathed in painful disbelief, “Rey-?”_

An explosion of light crippled the room.

 

The throne room vanished, as did the Knight of Ren. Rey opened her eyes to find Luke hovering above her, his face washed by mortified disbelief. His breath evaded him, and he struggled to stand.

 

A dread began to brew in Rey’s stomach as she realized what he’d seen in her mind.

 

She shifted, almost unable to speak with overflowing eyes, “Master... Master, I’m so sorry-”

 

”That’s enough.” He faced the wall away from her, his voice filled exhaustion and... _fury_  as two Resistance troopers flocked into the room to drag the fallen apprentice away.

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo Ren stared at his hands. The sores were still fresh, and they stung in his quarters’ sterile air. But, a different wound throbbed somewhere inside him, seared with visions of glimpsing her face.

 

He had _seen_ her.

 

He had _heard_ her.

 

She was there. _With_ him.

 

Not even all of Snoke’s reconditioning could change that.

 

 _Rey?_ His voice was frail in the force, perhaps a reflection of his body. Perhaps a mirror of his own fear.

 

 _Let me find you._ He pleaded vainly into an abyss of silence. _I will always be here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my dear, sweet readers.
> 
> Wow.
> 
> I am... so, so sorry.
> 
> Life got the best of me these past few months. I've been struggling with facing depression for the first time in my life, and I just couldn't find it in myself to do the things I used to love. Everything became filled with self-doubt, which is primarily why I haven't been writing. I've been afraid of posting new things for you all because I just... I didn't believe in myself. I'm not a perfect writer, and I know that. Hell, I'm not even an amateur. But, I'm still going to keep moving forward with this story for you lovely people who do believe in me and for myself. 
> 
> School hit me HARD this year. There's always that moment in high school where you think your grade, some stupid number defines who you are as a person and your future, and I've been struggling to see beyond that moment. I've also been busy as hell, so I neglected this work. And, I am so sorry.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to Bcldiva95 and Pandora_Spocks who both encouraged me to keep writing despite all these horrible, negative thoughts I was having. You saved me. You really, truly did.
> 
> A special thank you to Pandora, as well, who guided me through this chapter and even beta read it for me. Thank you endlessly for your kind words and the amount of support you offered me. I can't think of a better friend.
> 
> I really hope you all enjoyed this chapter! The vision scene may have been a little abstract, so if you're confused at all, please let me know! I haven't checked through this chapter yet, either, so my apologies if there are any typos!
> 
> Please let me know how you all feel about this work continuing! I've missed talking to you all, and I hope this chapter is worthy of that tremendous wait.
> 
> Happy reading and have a blessed day! <3


	12. I Am Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Two drowning people can't save each other.  
> All they can do is drag each other down.”
> 
> -Carsten Jensen

 

Rey slammed her fist against the table.

 

"Look at me.”

 

As his platter jingled against the strength of her fist, Luke Skywalker cemented his gaze where her fingers clenched the sleek table edge.

 

"Look at me!” The girl shrieked and caused a tidal wave of silence to ripple throughout the bustling Resistance lunchroom. “Luke... It’s been weeks since I’ve seen your eyes. The maker’s sake, Master, _look at me_!”

 

Skywalker did not so much as flinch. Rather, he fastened his grip on his tray of portions and stood himself up from the table. The eyes of the girl fractured as she followed his vanishing figure in labored breaths.

 

' _Luke_!” Her hand reached his shoulder and foiled his escape. He fought her hold on his arm, but she eventually drug his body to face her own.

 

Rey could feel the heat of her breath as she whispered in a plea, “Look at me... Master, just _look_ at me-”

 

“You’re making a scene,” Luke mumbled before he pivoted back toward the entrance of the room. His fallen apprentice, however, stretched out her fingers and twisted her wrist, and his tray slipped from his hands to soar into the wall, leaving splotches of portions across the metal paneling.

 

“No,” Rey stepped forward in a snarl, “ _That’s_ making a scene-”

 

“I won’t have this discussion with you here,” Luke whispered between gritted teeth as his eyes flickered anxiously across their open surroundings. Several groups of Resistance members had gathered to marvel at the spectacle- of a failed padawan and her ruined mentor.

 

The little Jedi did not feel the weight of their gazes as her master did. 

 

“Tell me why,” her voice was raw, “Why do you _hate_ me!”

 

”Do you expect me to feel proud of what you’ve done Rey?” Luke snapped, and the little Jedi stumbled backward at his sudden ferocity.

 

“No, _no_... I-I... I-”

 

“Answer me, Rey!” The Jedi Master marched forward as his face contorted into a warped frown, “Am I supposed to lie and say I’m not disappointed? Should I give you a hug and tell you everything’s going to be alright? What do you want me to say?! You failed me! I’m ashamed of you! I’m ashamed of your weakness! I’m ashamed of what you’ve become!”

 

Rey noticed then, through glossy eyes, the great many people observing this scene. “I did... what I thought would keep me _alive_ , Master.”

 

“I would rather you have _died_ ,” Luke straightened himself, “Than to have offered yourself to _darkness_.”

 

A murmur echoed throughout the spectators as Rey’s face crumbled in mortification and grief.

 

"Master... Master, you don’t mean that...”

 

The weathered Skywalker scanned the young woman with feral eyes before he spun on his heels out of the room in silence.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Disappointment.”

 

Kylo Ren let the weight of his helmet drag his face downward.

 

“This is all you’ve ever brought to me.”

 

The young man felt something twist and churn inside his thrumming heart as the fire of his anger fogged his mask.

 

“Supreme Leader,” his words muffled just enough to veil the way his voice splintered, “I have... completed every task you’ve set before me-”

 

“Silence!” Snoke’s almost holographic hand pounded against his chair, such force causing the boy to collapse onto his knees.

 

Kylo Ren weakly lifted himself off the floor. Weeks after his reconditioning, the man could still feel the throb of every scar on his back from Snoke’s electric whip.

 

“There is nothing inside your tattered heart but cowardice,” the disfigured man goaded, and Ren felt the leather gloves on his hands squish as he clenched his stiff fingers.

 

“You’re _wrong_ , Master-”

 

“Prove that to me, Kylo Ren. Prove your _worth_.” Snoke tapped a mangled finger on his throne while a crooked smile wrapped around his face.

 

“Destroy _her_.”

 

The Knight stiffened as he raised his quivering face to the Supreme Leader.

 

Snoke noticed, perhaps exploited his padawan’s apprehension. “Master of the Knights of Ren, slayer of Han Solo, child of fury and darkness, yet you still _cower_ at the very mentioning of your scavenger bitch.”

 

Ren let his gaze plummet as Snoke’s words sparked a gust of humiliation that flushed his face.

 

“Oh, my dear apprentice, do you truly believe she loved you?” Snoke’s eyes twitched, and he gradually slithered from his throne to approach his kneeling pupil. With the flick of Snoke’s hand, Ren felt the compressed air in his mask escape as his master unlatched the helmet with the force.

 

The Supreme Leader halted just inches before his apprentice while he rumbled, “Show yourself to me.”

 

Reluctantly, Ren reached for the sides of his helmet and slipped the object off of his head, unveiling his sweat covered face and ragged hair.

 

Snoke sank to his knees before the boy and stretched a twisted hand to grab the young man’s chin. As Ren released a pained grunt, his master heaved his face up toward his own.

 

“You fool,” Snoke hissed before he released the boy, only to raise his opposing hand and strike Ren across his cheek, “She _left_ you! She doesn’t love you! Your obsession is the ocean of weakness in which you have drowned!”

 

Kylo Ren gasped as he held the side of his face slowly being painted by a bruise. 

 

“I hear your cries into the force at night, the way you beg for her return,” the Supreme Leader waltzed placidly toward his throne, “You have failed me, lest you accept the little Jedi’s fate. She is _gone_.”

 

Ren turned his face from Snoke, but the ancient man’s voice reverberated nonetheless in his mind.

 

_Just like your father._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you sure you want to train, uh, _out here_?” Finn halfway shouted through the drizzle of rain, shielding himself and Poe beneath a worn leather jacket.

 

The pilot beside him nodded and called to their friend, “Yeah, I mean, won’t you get sick? Probably not the smartest decision after that stomach bug you had the past couple weeks, Rey-”

 

“Where’s your sense of adventure, you two?” The Jedi beamed. Her arms were outstretched as she giggled underneath the peaceful downpour.

 

Myhrillia was a unique Resistance base; General Leia Organa had proposed the idea of constructing a fort below water. That way, any siege attempted by the First Order would prove near impossible. The aquarium of a hideout was almost impenetrable, though even the most fortified bases could not remain flawless. At low tide, the roof of the submerged watchtower was cloaked by less than a foot of water, providing wet but open terrain for the young Jedi to practice swordsmanship.

 

Rey scanned the horizon of endless ocean which encapsulated the planet. Brushing a strand of raindrops from her forehead, she spun back to her companions, “This is perfect.”

 

“Well, then, I guess we’ll leave you to it, Rey,” Finn smiled before Poe yanked his partner’s arm toward the opened hatch behind them, “Try not to get too wet- er... soaked!”

 

As the chuckling pair staggered toward their escape from the downpour, Rey examined the roof of the watchtower. The wonder of aweing at her own rippled reflection atop the waves of Mhyrillia, or in any water for that matter, never failed to ignite a childlike glee in her.

 

Out here in the sandlike dunes of the sea, she had no companions. But, it didn’t quite feel so... _lonely_. Not like it felt in the Resistance. Rey was surrounded by people wherever she ventured in the base, but she was a stranger. An outsider. A traitor.

 

It seemed there was an invisible sheet of glass separating the Resistance from her, a wall composed of distrust and loathing. Luke’s outburst in the lunchroom the morning before had only strengthened the repulsion toward Rey, and this session of training had become her only chance of escape.

 

The Jedi breathed the salty, marine air.

 

Without her Master, it was no Ahch-To, but the force beat strongly still on the oceanic planet. It was all Rey needed.

 

She released a laugh, comforted by the warmth of energy around her as she sloshed her feet in the shallow water, kicking and giggling while spritz of rain drenched her skin through the fabric of her Jedi robes.

 

 _Guide me,_ Rey begged of the force with eyes sewn shut, and her fingers fell to the metallic staff strapped to her back.

 

She gripped the only weapon she had and slung it over her head as it found its place at her side.

 

_Its energy surrounds us..._

 

Rey obeyed the quiet rumble of the force, sucking in steady breaths and swinging her weapon in precise maneuvers.

 

_...binds us..._

 

She could sense the pulse of the ocean’s tide, and she stepped to its wild beat.

 

_Feel it..._

 

With a grunt, Rey struck the shallows. A ping resounded where her staff had met the titanium roof, but Rey paid no mind, instead enthralled by the song of the force. It sang in the air, in the ocean, in the rain around her. She spun with staff in hand, matching the ferocity of the storm as she wielded her mighty weapon.

 

_...it calls to you!_

 

She lifted the staff in a scream, and, with both hands, slammed the weapon upon the ground she stood. Rey peeled open her eyes to find the water around her receding in an inverted cascade, rising in a wall around her as if the strike of her staff had commanded the waves’ retreat.

 

 _Who are you?_ The force chimed, though it knew already her answer.

 

The Jedi raised her staff to the storm cloaked sky as the water sank back into a clamorous sea around her.

 

“ _I am Rey_!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The jittery ship rumbled as the soldiers inside showed no more ease than their vessel.

 

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Finn murmured, clutching his armored helmet while Rey beside him stood from her seat.

 

“Poe!” She shouted and gripped the iron handles on the freighter’s ceiling, “Let us down here!”

 

“What?” Dameron peeked around his co-pilot seat, temporary until they landed and he climbed aboard his X-Wing, “Are you insane? They’re going to see us!”

 

"That’s the point, you buffoon! We’re the distraction!” The Jedi shouted in reply before she spun back to the ship’s port door. Her hand fell onto the unfamiliar weapon strapped to her belt, and Finn’s eyes followed her fingers.

 

“Luke is going to _kill_ you if he finds out you stole his saber,” the anxious man sputtered as Rey ignited the weapon, “Granted, we don’t die in this ambush  _first-”_

 

A Tie Fighter’s blast against the freighter’s exterior silenced the bumbling soldier while Rey stepped toward the lowering port door.

 

"Rey!” Poe spun his chair back toward the bay of soldiers, and the Jedi met his confident gaze. “May the force be with you.”

 

 

The young woman smirked and clutched her unsheathed, emerald blade, “ _Always_.”

 

As a plume of smoke below rustled her wisps of hair, Rey lunged off the freighter and tumbled onto the burning planet in a fluid motion. The noise of the fleeing freighter was joined by the moans of splintering trees, and Rey scanned the terrain to discover a world on fire. The stench of scorched wood met her noise as the Jedi scrambled to evade a collapsing tree limb.

 

X-Wings swarmed the sky above, and Rey stifled a cough in the wake of smothering smoke. Wiping sweat from her brow, the Jedi regained her footing and tredged onward through the maze-like inferno until she stumbled onto a much slicker surface, her hands landing flatly against ice.

 

Rey raised her wary gaze and observed a lake before her, frozen over thick enough to withstand the blaze engulfing the planet. On the water’s other side, she could faintly make out the silhouette of the First Order base in the night skyline, illuminated by ghostly light from the wildfires. Soldiers from both sides of the battlefield were tearing each other apart at the building’s feet.

 

The Jedi stood herself onto her two wobbly legs and brushed pockets of ash from her shoulder.

 

She knew what needed to be done.

 

_“Kylo Ren!"_

 

The woman thundered both out loud and into the sore gashes of their bond.

 

This had been her plan, her mission; destroy the final Knight of Ren at all costs.

 

As Rey dragged her searching eyes across the smoldering landscape, a fire of heartbreak and fury, one to match the inferno in which she was snared, bubbled inside her.

 

The Jedi pointed her lightsaber into the darkness toward the First Order Base, “Show yourself, coward!”

 

She wheezed sickly in the silence, ignoring a sudden throb rising in her lower body. Instead, she waved her weapon in a defensive stance as the terrible melodies of war echoed around her.

 

"Come out and fight, you bastard!”

 

 _Rey_.

 

The woman staggered slightly at the sound of his pitiful voice.

 

Her blurred gaze obstructed his familiar blade of blazing crimson as it drew ever closer. Kylo Ren became visible, slowly trekking over the frozen lake with a face lit only by the fires around them. As sparks of leaves and tree limbs fluttered beside him, Ren had eyes for only his Jedi.

 

“Rey,” he marveled at her, eyeing the way she appeared almost luminous beneath the moonlight.

 

The Jedi, however, clenched her saber’s hilt and lunged at the man with her blade. He parried the attack swiftly, and a wicked emotion clouded his eyes along with memories of Snoke’s command.

 

_Destroy her._

In a screech, Kylo slammed the Jedi back toward the forest with the sheer might of his figure. “ _You left me!_ ”

 

Rey stumbled and narrowly caught herself on the ground, her lightsaber plunging through the ice before she moved it to block another of Ren’s attacks.

 

“Do you know what he did to me! Because of _you_!” Kylo shrieked, and Rey dodged his blade by sliding against the frozen lake. His blade hissed as it met the ice.

 

Rey heaved her quivering figure off the frigid ground in heavy breaths, “You... _lied_ to me!”

 

"I loved you!” The man knocked her onto the cracking ice again, the weight of his boots causing the ground to rumble, “And, you _left_ me!”

 

Rey released a nauseous moan as her lost husband pressed his saber atop hers, pinning her against the ice. He howled from both his anger and from the way the Jedi countered his strength.

 

“I feel it. I feel it in how our bond burns. You _need_ me!” Ren’s face was so close to hers that his untamed hair brushed against her forehead, “And, I need you!”

 

Rey gasped from the weight of his body atop her own. She clenched her teeth and pushed back against him, unable to prevent the downpour from her eyes as she murmured in a weak and dizzy haze, “Ren... Ren, please...”

 

Kylo readjusted his gaze and noticed the sweat beaded across her skin, the way her face had paled, the whimpers escaping her lips, and he gently retreated in a single moment of empathic thoughtlessness, “You’re sick.”

 

The Jedi seized her opportunity and shoved the Knight off of her figure, dropping her lightsaber with him. She didn’t look back to retrieve it. She dared not even look back to face Kylo Ren in her victory.

 

Rey fled.

 

Her stomach was boiling, and she tripped over chunks of ice as she raced toward the First Order base where Resistance soldiers still battled.

 

“Rey!” A betrayed scream erupted behind her, but the Jedi’s head thudded with a wooziness that muffled the cry. The woman released a sob as she held herself in her desperate attempt of escape.

 

But, before she’d covered half the distance toward her only hope of salvation, Rey doubled over and retched.

 

Her throat stung as she began to sob before another wave of nausea overtook her body, and the Jedi was left to heave and gag in a terrifying lack of self control.

 

Rey whimpered after her sickness had ceased. In her weakened, vulnerable state, she slid back onto her rear, exhaling ragged breaths, while she caught the eyes of Kylo Ren beside her.

 

He had chased her; that much was true. But, he hadn’t taken advantage of this weakness of hers. He hadn’t even trekked closer to the woman as she had expelled her guts.

 

He had watched in worry.

 

Rey rubbed her mouth and turned her head, humiliated, but Kylo Ren ignored her mortification and moved to share her gaze again.

 

He _knew_.

 

Something in his eyes had fractured. They were no longer sharp and enraged but tender and quiet. His chest contracted as did the rest of his muscles, but he showed no aggression. Despite his flared nostrils and clenched fists, he appeared fearful.

 

He knew, even though the Jedi Knight herself did not.

 

Cautiously, Ren planted a foot in the space closer to her and offered her a hand, “Rey... I-”

 

A Tie Fighter bellowed above them, on the tail of an X-Wing, and before the Knight could finish, a stray blast from the ships oblitered the patch of ground between them, and the unbalanced ice tipped the pair over and into the gelid water below.

 

Kylo Ren emerged from the depths first, thrashing as his robes threatened to drag his figure beneath the lake once more. He clawed at the ice beside him until his fingers dug into the frozen sheet, but immediately his eyes wandered back to scan the water.

 

Nothing but the fragmented piece of glacier he’d once stood on floated in the water.

 

"Rey!” Kylo begged, watching his breath fog the air before him as he pushed himself off of the wall to the center shard of ice. He grip the unstable island, panting and licking his shivering lips. _“Rey!”_

 

As if the force had heard his cry, she appeared on the opposite side of the floating ice, choking and flailing while her face barely remained above the surface.

 

Ren felt dizzy with relief, but he remembered quickly a truth from their past; she couldn’t swim.

 

“Rey!” He shrieked again, maneuvering himself with his hands along the side of the ice block toward her.

 

She shouted and reached toward Ren as she saw him, though she struggled still to keep her head above the lake’s surface. He reached her at last, steadying himself on the ice as he held an arm out toward her. “Grab my hand!”

 

The Jedi obeyed and clutched his forearm before he shouted and heaved her soaked figure over the side of the more stable ground, still clutching to the ice. As he waded over toward the same solid ground, Rey crawled onto her knees and coughed out spurts of frigid water before she collapsed onto the ice in trembles.

 

Kylo Ren dragged himself up and over the ice with several grunts, but he staggered to the Jedi’s side before even daring to inspect his own condition.

 

"Rey!” He fell to his knees beside her and lifted her body into his arms, “Rey, I-I’m sorry...”

 

The Jedi Knight coughed again, but she’d no energy for words as her body shuddered against his chest.

 

Ren exhaled in what resembled most closely a cry and lifted Rey’s forehead to his lips, rubbing his thumb against her abdomen. “I’m sorry...”

 

A calamitous crash pulled the Knight’s stare away from the woman in his arms, and Ren glanced upward to discover a landing X-Wing. The glass covering of the pilot seat popped open, and Poe Dameron slid over the side of the vehicle, dashing toward the pair of shivering force wielders.

 

With a groan, Kylo Ren stood himself and carried Rey from off the ground, and, as the pilot approached, the Knight held the Jedi out toward him. 

 

“Take her t-to a hospital!” He shouted, still quivering, as Dameron reached his side, “Sh-She’s going to freeze...”

 

The man nodded and scooped the drenched woman from Ren’s arms, lifting hopeful eyes up to his long lost friend.

 

But, just as soon as the Knight of Ren had manifested, his figure vanished into the torched night sky.

 

Rey felt his absence, but, even so, as Poe cradled and carried her home, she could still feel him whisper.

 

_I’m sorry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are the fucking best people on the planet. That's all I have to say.
> 
> To come back here after months and months and feel so much love... I honestly have no way to describe that. Thank you all so much for reaching out and supporting this work! You are invaluable to me. All I can say is... Thank you.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to my lovely friend who goes by @UnderKeyAndLock on here, and this work as whole is also dedicated to @Pandora_Spocks who has continuously been a powerhouse of compassion and support for me. Keely, thank you for putting up with all my BS and for confiding in my need to show someone teasers. You're the freaking best! And, Pandora, I hope you know that there isn't a root of any plant that grows as deep as my gratitude for you. Thank you for everything <3
> 
> Anyway, let me know how you feel about this chapter! I know, I know, I pulled a fast one. But, hey, that's been in the description of this work for month! I hope it's as fun for you to actually be reaching this plot point as it is for me. :)
> 
> Have a blessed day and happy reading!

**Author's Note:**

> “For love of night, for love of day,  
> she can’t implore him that he sway  
> from course To be apart’s their plight.  
> For love of day, for love of night.”
> 
> -Andrea Dietrich


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